


Occidere

by paradoxicalconverse



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst AF, BBD, Black Badge Division, Complete, F/F, F/M, apocalypse gays, if I had a really sick sense of humor I guess I could technically call this a murder mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-08-03 23:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 37,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16335536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxicalconverse/pseuds/paradoxicalconverse
Summary: When Nicole Haught wakes up behind, "the wall," she's immediately relieved--no more having to run from the zombies that have infected the remainder of humanity. But strange things begin to happen during the night since she's shown up, things she can't help but think she might have taken part of. And why does she keep having to return to the laboratory for bloodwork if she's healthy?Alternatively, the Zombie AU that none of you asked for.





	1. To Drink, to Die

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to start this out by saying that if you're confused about something, ask questions! I literally love answering them. That being said, if answering the question would give away a spoiler of sorts, all I'm going to answer with is this: ":)"
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://please-say-nine.tumblr.com)!
> 
> also I looked it up and it's pronounced "oh-chi-dare-ae"

Eighteen has become a taboo number around the camp—spoken under hushed tones of dread, snarled like it were a curse. It burns Waverly Earp’s tongue as she rolls it around her mouth in front of the mirror. Unnatural between her teeth and barbed against her gums, a stark reminder of her new reality.

Eighteen.

 _Old enough to drink, old enough to die_ , Wynonna had said as she shoved a bottle of whiskey into Waverly’s hands and a pistol into the other. _Congratulations, babygirl, you’re eighteen._ The pistol sits unloaded on the edge of Waverly’s trunk at the foot of her bed. In an hour she’ll be behind the wall with it tucked between her thumb and forefinger. In an hour she’ll be the only other taboo word she knows behind the gates—a _killer_. But for now, she’s Waverly. Just Waverly, if only for a little longer, and that has to be enough.

Shaking hands pull her hair into a single braid down the back of her head; it’s sloppy and falling apart in places, but she can’t find it in herself to care. The stakes have changed, they rocketed skyward on September eighth and there’s little chance of them coming back. Wynonna’s voice had left a sour taste in her mouth, Waverly knows, as she saw her baby sister’s name appear on the roster of new runners a week ago when the first day of September rolled around.

A knock on her door shakes her out of her reprieve as reality shrieks in her ear. Her jumpsuit feels tight, too tight, like it’s compressing into her chest and squeezing the air from her lungs, and then there’s a hand on her shoulder and she’s glancing up at Wynonna, all dark hair and blue eyes and harsh angles colluded. Her eyebrows are knit together in worry. “Hey babygirl,” she whispers. “You okay?”

Waverly forces her head to nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. Just nervous.”

Wynonna nods and pulls Waverly against her. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, you know. Not ever.”

Waverly nods against Wynonna’s chest. She wants to believe Wynonna, she does; but what lives beyond the wall doesn’t care for sisterly affection or promises of safety. If they did, Waverly wouldn’t be picking at a loose string in the forearm of her suit while her nerves shake themselves free.

Wynonna’s hands clasp Waverly’s shoulder and push her back, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I promise you’ll be okay. We’ll be home in time for dinner. We always are.”

“ _You_ always are,” Waverly counters. Her voice wobbles.

“Exactly. Think I’m gonna let one of those bastards even look at you without blowing their heads off? You remember Champ Hardy. Now c’mon, that stick up Nedley’s ass doesn’t wait for humanity and neither do we.” Waverly’s legs move her mechanically, following Wynonna through the winding maze of the dorms until harsh autumn air bites into her exposed skin; the mandatory jumpsuit all runners receive upon recruitment covers everywhere but her hands and face.

The dining hall isn’t a far nor particularly horrendous walk but Waverly’s mind is reeling over what she’ll find when she enters and it’s enough to make the trek seem abysmal beyond compare.

It’s what she always finds, of course. The sunken eyes of the other runners, each in an identical gray jumpsuit, some more worn than others. The unnerving stillness and silence that permeates the air after breakfast is over and before Nedley shuffles into the room to announce the next day’s runners and send the current ones off. As if words would shatter the small fragment of fantasy they’ve created from breakfast alone; that zombies don’t wreck havoc outside of the walls.

John Henry (Doc) Holliday and Xavier Dolls are already there when Wynonna and Waverly arrive. It’s not hard to find them, what with Doc’s mustache taking up more space at the table than he himself does. It quivers every so slightly when Waverly sits and he says, “Ms. Earp,” with a bow of his head and his hand over his heart. “Pleased that you should be attendin’ our outing today. Stackin’ up to be a right good one, at that.”

Waverly blinks.

“Leave her alone,” Dolls says, and reaches across the table to take Waverly’s hands. His own are warm and callused and it seeps from her fingertips into her chest. “We’ll be okay, Waverly. We wouldn’t let anyone—any _thing_ —out there lay a hand on you.” He pretends to glance around for a moment before leaning in close and whispering, “Mainly because Wynonna would kill us if we did,” then shoots her the warmest smile that he can.

It helps, if only a bit.

“Shit talking me already, Dolls?” Wynonna snarls as her boot kicks over the side of the table and a tray plops down in front of Waverly. Dolls frowns at her.

“I’m not hungry—” Waverly starts and Wynonna takes the opportunity to shove a spoon into the meager attempt at oatmeal and then into her sister’s mouth.

“I don’t care. I’m not having you pass out behind the wall because you didn’t feel like eating before your first run. No one is carrying anyone home today.” Her eyes snap between Dolls and Doc for a moment before aggressively settling back on her own food.

There’s got to be a story in there, Waverly decides.

She can’t sit on it much longer; Randy Nedley appears at the front of the room, a toothpick sticking out the side of his mouth and bags under his eyes so heavy Waverly could swear they’re designer. Salt-and-pepper hair falls in limp strands around his skull, revealing his age. Stubble does the same as it clings to his lower lip, skin wrinkled and old. At sixty, Waverly imagines he’s seen more than his fair share of years. An old black jacket covers what she thinks may be a suit of some sorts—police uniform from before the wall was thrown up, maybe.

He surveys the room for a moment and she can see something akin to pity cross his face before it hardens as he glances over at her group. The runners for that day. “Mornin,’” he says, and it’s enough to quiet the entire room. Waverly’s not sure if it’s a respect thing or a fear thing, but it works.

His throat clears and he dives straight in. “I’m seein’ lots of new faces today, which is expected. We all know why there are so many September babies.” A few laughs here and there, but they’re hollow. “Now, I’m here to clear up some misconceptions for the new runners today. I don’t know what you all have heard about zombies, but I can guarantee them fuckers ain’t what you think. First of all, they ain’t called zombies, not here and not to me. They’re infecteds. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass what you call them to each other, but anyone in my presence who refers to them as zombies is gettin’ sent outside the wall in nothin’ but their god given birthday suit. Second, they ain’t dead. Not yet. You see ‘em and it’s your job to make ‘em that, though, before that’s what they make you.” His eyes scan the room for a moment and Waverly is surprised to see that they’re full of sorrow, not malice. He continues.

“Look around. This is your new family. You live for ‘em, you die for ‘em. We send runners every day, and whenever you run, you’re going to be with this same group. Trust ‘em more than you would trust yourselves—it’ll save your life one day, and you can quote me on that. Now.” His toothpick falls from his mouth and he crushes it against the ground like one might do with a cigarette; the action is almost enough to make Waverly laugh for someone reason—the familiarity of it seems so _exotic_.

“Do not take this job lightly.” Something similar to a rasp bleeds into his voice. “How many of you ever wondered why we named this compound Purgatory?” A few hands raise for a moment before realizing the rhetoricality of the question and drop quickly. “Because there ain’t no heaven anymore and out there’s hell. That’s why we in Purgatory; waitin’ to die and hopin’ it never comes. In here’s ‘bout as heaven as it gets, you hear me?  You think this is hell? Wait until your heiney’s outside this wall and there’s thirty of them devils hot on your tail. Then you’ll be beggin’ me to let you back in. You ain’t never seen nowhere as beautiful as this here shitthole than when you been out there for more than a day.” His eyes go wistful for a moment.

“You got two jobs when you’re out there. One, you get as much shit as you can get your hands on that we can use. Medication, food, whether it’s rotten or not. You fill up your backpacks before you come back. And two, you stay alive no matter what. You rely on each other to stay that way, too. Those of you who been in here since you were younger than eighteen know the drill without specifically knowing what you’re doing.”

Waverly’s throat goes dry.

“You _never_ shoot that damn gun of yours unless you are being _currently_ attacked. Them fuckers like noise, a lot, and guns are loud. You shoot one of those in the air for fun and you ain’t gonna be fast enough to make it behind the wall before there’s a chunk missing from your pretty little faces.”

The telltale signs of his speech ending start showing through, running concurrent to Waverly’s heart beginning to pound in her chest. “Unit 4!” He barks. Waverly flinches. Dolls’s eyes go cold. “You’re running today. You got ten minutes before I want your asses at the gates. Unit 12! You’re running tomorrow.”

No one cheers. The table with unit 12 slumps in their seats ever so slightly. Waverly can recognize a few kids from training, but she forces her eyes away. The clock is ticking, and she has fate to meet.

* * *

 “Give us clearance, you assholes!” Wynonna shakes her gun for a moment before making a face at the gate guards. “This isn’t our first rodeo but it sure as hell is gonna be your last if you don’t let us through the damn gates!” The gun rattles in her grip. Doc rolls his eyes. His mustache seems to do the same.

“Wynonna,” he starts, only to get cut off by her shaking her gun again and releasing an animalistic snarl.

“For god’s sake, Earp.” A voice behind Waverly has her turning on her heel and falling into Dolls for a moment. He steadies her without question and stands at ready. “You know that no one opens that gate without direct clearance from Purgatory’s finest.”

“I sure as hell hope you’re not talking about yourself,” Wynonna snarls. The ground beneath her boots crunches as she steps closer to Waverly and wraps a protective arm around her. Nedley huffs and shakes his heads. “You know the rules, Earp, and you’d be best to follow them if you want to end up alive. Keep quiet out there. You’re on a Med Bay run today, so stay safe.” His eyes go soft for a moment as he glances over the four. Waverly can imagine what he’s seeing; to someone his age they can’t be more than a bunch of gangly kids with dirt in their hair and fear in their hearts, ready to face the horrors beyond the wall.

(Wynonna would no doubt bite his head off if she heard him say “kid” in reference to her; twenty five is no longer _kid_ material, thank you.)

“It’s been a hot zone for the past month or two since we found it so we’ve been a bit too hesitant to send anyone, but it finally cleared up last night around 11. Hopin’ it stays that way for you all.” Waverly imagines he would tip his hat if he had one and then he nods at the guards, who immediately take to pushing at the doors. It takes a moment for the momentum to kick in and then they glide open on silent hinges constantly bathed in oil. A gun sticks through the fissure until it widens more and one of the guards manges to wrestle their head through and glance around before giving the all clear.

Wynonna presses a kiss against Waverly’s head and nods reassuringly. “You can do this,” she whispers, placidly ignoring Nedley’s glares, before jutting her chin at Doc and Dolls to head through first. They slip through, guns held taut at chest level, swinging side to side. Wynonna hoists her own assault rifle against her hip and gives Waverly a shove until her feet meet the soil outside of the wall and Wynonna is falling through a second later. She has barely enough time to turn to see the break in the metal sheeting of the gates before Wynonna’s hands are pulling her onward until the gates are no longer even in view.

“You listen to me,” she whispers. “I’m the group leader.” Despite how quiet Wynonna is, her words sound like explosions ready to attract infecteds at any moment. “Doc, Dolls, you, you take orders from me. And trust me, babygirl. I’m never going to let anything hurt you. Med Bay is a mile out. And Waves.” She actually stops walking, turns Waverly’s shoulders to face her. Doc and Dolls keep their guns up, circling like hyenas. “If you ever don’t know what to do, you look to me and I’ll tell you what to do.”

They don’t have time for hugs and Waverly knows this, so she nods and steels herself over. If she’s going to be a runner she’s going to have to act like one first.

The Med Bay is small but accurately named. A first-aid cross, burnt out and tilted slightly, adorns the top of a building Waverly wants to think was once white but has now taken on a dull gray. Fissures races up the side of the building, crawling with vines, half dead and browned. It’s desolate, a pathetic window into what life before the wall was like. The front of the building is even worse—sliding glass doors host holes and broken glass on both sides. Something Waverly hopes isn’t dried blood stains the edges of the shatters, a lifeless brown.

“Jesus,” Wynonna whispers. She slings her gun over her shoulder and wraps an arm around Waverly’s shoulders. “I’ve heard rumors about this shit hole, but never actually seen it. Worse than Nedley described it to me last night.” Chocolate hair swirls against her face for a moment as she shakes her head. “Doc and Dolls go in first, sweep the place, then let us in.” She motions for them to open the door and it shrieks, making everyone flinch.

Silence settles back over the trees and Wynonna is instantly in front of Waverly again as her eyes search the horizon, but nothing appears. “We’re clear,” Dolls murmurs a second later, emerging from the Med Bay. “You see anything out there?”

“Clear,” Wynonna murmurs absentmindedly. Her eyes flick over the horizon again and Waverly can feel her hand tightening on her arm until she’s pushing Waverly inside. “Doc, you take the front of the store.” He nods and hands over his backpack. “Dolls, there’s an exit around back. Stand guard there. Waves and I are going to fill this shit up and then we’re getting the hell out of here.” Then, under her breath, “Thank god Willa isn’t here to see this.”

It takes Waverly back. She freezes. “What did you say?”

Wynonna’s shrug is desperately nonchalant. “I just…you know—knew. You knew her babygirl. This—” Her hand waves around the building. Somewhere in the corner, a rat scuttles. “—was never her thing. She…I’m glad she isn’t alive to be here for this.” It in’t a question, nor is it something that Waverly can answer to. Wynonna is right, as much as she hates to admit it. “Come on, babygirl, we’ve got shit to steal.” She tosses Dolls’s backpack Waverly’s way and scampers into the store, boots landing silently among shattered bottles of cough syrup.

She runs with the grace of someone who’s looked death in the face and laughed—and Waverly knows that she has because she refuses to say what happens outside the walls when she’s gone on runs. It’s Waverly’s first today and Wynonna tried her best to keep her horrors to herself to keep Waverly from panicking. She isn’t sure she’ll ever manage to pry them from Wynonna’s lips, frankly.

She tiptoes to a new aisle and begins to shove whatever she can into the backpacks. Prescription bottles rattle against her fingers that she manages to silence by wrapping her hands around them and tucking them away safely in between her emergency jacket.

Everything is silent, eerily so, as if the ground is holding its breath. Waiting for an answer to a question it hasn’t asked. Her hands scrape the rest of the bottles into her bag as her knees start to burn from squatting. There’s a shout of surprise from the aisle over and Waverly jumps instantly, head narrowly missing knocking over a whole shelf of night-aid. “Wynonna?” she squeaks.

“Oh, you guys are not going to _believe_ this.” Wynonna’s voice reeks of distrust.

Waverly’s around the corner in one second and stopping dead in her tracks in the next. Wynonna’s squatting, eyebrows crinkled together as her hand reaches forward and ghosts over the leg of a body.

Bruised, battered, and barely alive, but _breathing_. She can’t be much older than Waverly—early twenties at most, with hair Waverly imagines to be stark red if it’s clean, matted down to her ribs. Ripped jeans sit low on her hips and a torn shirt that was probably once white but it now a dirty brown hangs off a lean frame, hardly more than scraps.

Despite the blood that coats her face and the dirt smeared into the seams of her skin, she’s _beautiful_. “Holy shit,” Waverly breathes. She drops to one knee and her hand joins Wynonna, trailing against the figure in front of her. Her braid, almost entirely undone from walking through the underbrush on the trek here, slips over a shoulder to tickle the nose in front of her. The girl’s eyes twitch for a moment. “She’s human. She’s alive.”

“It’s not possible,” Wynonna murmurs, but even as she says it she’s readjusting the bags on her shoulder and wrapping an arm under her shoulder. “Help me lift from the legs.”

Waverly’s fingers make their way over a collarbone and to the crevice of her neck where more blood, now dried, has pooled. Scratches and bruises canvas the majority of the skin available, a variation of hues from red to purple and everything in between. “Waves,” Wynonna snaps, and Waverly withdraws her hand like she’s been burned. “Help me with the legs.”

Dolls is there suddenly, lifting her like she weighs nothing. Her body slumps in his arms. “I’ve got it, Earp.” He smiles at her reassuringly. Wynonna blushes. “Time to go.”

Waverly can feel the words tripping out of her mouth, her mind reeling at the figure drooped in Dolls’s arms. Her head lolls back against his bicep. “But we didn’t…there’s still more stuff here.” Her eyes are glued to that red hair. In a momentary lapse, she wonders what color her eyes are.

“We filled up the backpacks, babygirl. Anything more will weigh us down.” Wynonna’s zipping pockets and slinging her gun back over her shoulder, standing as she does.

“But…”

“We’ll come back for it. Or someone else will. The point is it’s not our problem anymore. Time to get out here, Dolls is right. We’ll be back home in half an hour, safe and sound.” She nods her hand at the miserable excuse for a door. “Now move your cute butt.”

Waverly looks back around for a last moment, as if trying to memorize the containers left, before shrugging Dolls’s backpack onto her front to counteract the one on her back. He’s being weighed down enough as is. Her eyes skim back over the figure. She’s curled up a bit into Dolls, legs a bit more tucked than before. Her hands rest against his chest and _something_ flares in Waverly’s chest. She forces it down and nods to Wynonna, and then they’re back out the doors and Wynonna and Doc are preying with guns held at the ready.

* * *

 They’re about halfway back to camp when something settles in Waverly’s gut. Unnatural. The silence has become quiet, too quiet, and she can feel blood rush into her ears. “I don’t feel right, Wynonna,” Waverly murmurs as she falters her steps to match pace her sister. “Something is wrong.” Her eyes trace over Dolls for a moment. Wynonna nods but in a way that makes Waverly feel like she hasn’t registered it. “I’m serious, Wynonna. Something isn’t right.” Waverly’s voice is more urgent now, her head whipping around as the whispers tear from the back of her throat. The trees are caving in, the sky is falling, everything is happening all at once. “We need to get out of here. We need to go. We need to—”

“Waves!” Wynonna snaps. She takes a heavy breath and shakes her head. “I was the same way on my first raid, too. I understand that you’re stressed. But Dolls and Doc and I know what we’re doing and it’s like Nedley said, you need to trust us, trust _me_. I’m the group leader, I said I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” The barrel of her gun spins for a second as she does a turn to check the surroundings. Clear.

Waverly’s gut begins to scream. Something is _wrong_. She opens her mouth to protest again but the look Wynonna gives her is enough for her to slam her jaw shut. There’s a crackle off to the right and the whole group spins, guns at the ready. A squirrel stares them down with disinterest then hops away, crushed pine cone in between its teeth. “Way to go, Waves,” Wynonna hisses. “Your spidey senses caught us a fucking squirrel.”

Waverly wants to frown but before she can she’s screaming, “ _Behind you!_ ” and Wynonna’s turning on her heel, letting loose a round of bullets. They bury themself into the creature behind her, and it’s the first time Waverly’s ever seen one of _them_.

Skin so pale it’s practically glowing green. Dark blue veins spider web across visible skin, coated in lacerations that are no doubt infected. The teeth that remain as the creature roars from the ground are yellowed and broken off, fragmented remains of what were no doubt beautiful pearly whites at some point. It shrieks once and falls silent, brown guts splattered in a halo around the corpse.

Doc and Dolls are both poised, knees bent, waiting. The girl has been hoisted over Dolls’s shoulder to give him a better range of movement. A pistol is slick in his grip, held at his waist as he waits. “Did—did you kill it?” Waverly whispers. Wynonna turns, eyes wide with fear.

“I really don’t fucking care, babygirl. We need to get the hell out of here before more of them—”

A screech cuts through the silence like glass. “I do believe they have found us,” Doc remarks, and then Waverly’s feet are carrying her faster than her mind is. Everyone else has taken off as well. Red hair bobs unceremoniously against the muscles in Dolls’s back as he sprints. _Thank god for the training_ , Waverly thinks offhandedly.

She can hear crackling and grunts of something not quite human behind her but doesn’t dare turn her head—they’re close and getting closer and she does _not_ have time to think about that right now, not when the only thing between her and losing half her face is a pistol—that she fucking _left in her room._

She curses herself out and forces her legs to go faster, faster, until she’s pulling even with Doc. Wynonna’s behind her, shooting over her shoulder as she sprints. They crest a hill and suddenly the wall is _there_ , about a quarter mile out, a sleek gray against the brown of dying trees that reside by it. Safe.

It recharges Waverly to push herself harder even though her ankles are burning and her ribs feel like they’ve broken off inside her chest. Her foot hits a tree root and she goes down hard, hands catching the majority of her blow. Wynonna is almost instantly at her side, pulling her back to her feet. “Not the time to trip, babygirl!” she shouts and forces Waverly forward. Doc’s almost made it there and he slams into the button alerting the other side to open up with the whole weight of his body. “Go!” He shouts. His hands wave frantically as if encouraging marathon runners to the finish line. The doors jolt and he latches his hands over the other side, pulling hard until a crack just wide enough for a body has opened and Dolls is throwing the girl through and then himself, tumbling to the ground and instantly back to his feet to scoop up the mesh of red hair and gangly limbs then sprinting for the infirmary.

“Faster, babygirl!” Wynonna encourages. The bite in her voice is sharp as it nips at Waverly’s ankles. Doc has slipped through already, hands grasping the handles on the other side, ready to pull the doors as soon as they’re both through.

“Close them!” Wynonna screams, and gives Waverly a shove. It’s enough to send her forward hard enough that her feet leave the ground and she’s diving forward; her body twists to see Wynonna about ten feet behind her, legs bunched as she runs, ready to launch. Waverly hits the ground hard and skids back, eyes wide as the sight in front of her unfurls. An infected is on Wynonna’s heels, snarling as it bites down hard on air where Wynonna’s hair was milliseconds before. “Close them!” Wynonna screams again and launches herself at the same time the infected reaches for her.

Doc pulls, hard. Wynonna dives through the narrowing crack in the gates a second before it slams shut. There’s a brief howl and then the gates close on the infected’s hand reaching for Wynonna and the appendage falls disconnected from its owner, inches from where she dry heaves on the ground.


	2. Blackened at her Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole Haught accustoms to life behind the wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey kids what's crackin as always here's my [tumblr](https://please-say-nine.tumblr.com)

Someone is talking, and quickly at that. A mile a minute. Her head feel fuzzy, like her thoughts have been replaced with cotton. Everything feels different, somehow. Her eyes blink, blearly with sleep as her head lolls for a moment against a pillow. A _pillow_.

The voice is still talking, if anything a bit more excited since she opened her eyes. She’s not sure she cares all that much. Her fingers wiggle, then her toes. They brush against something soft and cotton. Bright sunlight streams in from a window somewhere above her head, illuminating the rest of her as her eyes scan the room.

She’s laying in a bed, a real fucking _bed_ , under some white blankets that are almost so bright they hurt her eyes, still adjusting. Her head turns slowly to look around at more than just herself. To her left is a skinny olive-skinned boy who lights up when she look at him and starts talking at her more, moving his hands for emphasis. He’s dressed in a white lab coat and curly black hair is trimmed neatly against the side of his heads. She can register his lips moving, sound coming from his mouth, and yet.

She hears nothing.

She moves past him to look around a bit more. There are other beds like hers around the giant hall and it’s all very hospital like, until it hits her that this is what it might actually be. An infirmary of sorts.

Her head swims a second more until it’s like a barrier breaks and the boy’s voice comes flooding in all at once. He’s saying something about blood pressure, and then a machine next to her is beeping. Someone across the room is coughing, someone else is crying, and it’s too much, there’s too much happening, and the boy keeps talking.

Her head snaps towards him and he becomes even more animated. His hands draw dizzying patterns in front of him and she needs _out_ , she needs _out of here, right the hell now_. Her hands, once covered by soft cloth, begin to pull at her IVs and she’s kicking at the blankets. She isn’t sure if she’s making noise or not, but an extra shriek has joined the mass of sounds and maybe it’s her. Everything feels hot. Her skin is burning, she’s burning, she can’t breathe.

A cool hand presses against her right bicep, and everything stops. Her skin cools, her lungs inhale. She immediately freezes as her eyes trace up the hand to a defined arm and finally to its owner. Her heart throws itself against her ribcage as she does. “Shh,” the girl whispers as her hands begin to rub comforting circles in her arm. “Shh, there’s no reason to freak out.” She gives her a smile and it’s almost blinding, how beautiful she is. “I’m Waverly. Waverly Earp. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

 _Waverly Earp_.

The name settles against her tongue, comfortable. This is a name she could get to used to rolling around in her mouth. “That’s it, lay back down,” Waverly coaxes with another smile, and she gets the feeling that she’d do just about anything this girl asked if that smile accompanied it.

Her shoulders hit the mattress, now a bit inclined to sit more at eye-level. Waverly pulls the blankets back up over her and she wants to whine when Waverly removes her arm to do so, but she quickly replaces it on her hand, and, well, she can’t complain about that all too much.

Waverly lets her adjust until she’s comfortable and nods, encouraging. “You know my name, I think it’s fair I know yours now,” so proceeds.

Her mouth opens to respond but nothing comes out, only dry air, and Waverly’s eyes go wide. “Oh my gosh, you much be so thirsty!” Then there’s a plastic cup against her mouth and cool water against her tongue, water that isn’t from a pool she found in someone’s abandoned backyard or a puddle from the last night’s rain.

No, this water is _clean_ , it’s incredible. It’s like drinking sunlight. But it’s gone all too soon and she’s whining for more. _Jesus, when did I turn into a fucking child?_ She thinks, but another cup is against her lips and she gulping with abandon until Waverly is laughing and pulling away. Her lips follow to cup for a moment hoping for its return, but Waverly shakes her head. “You’ll get sick if you drink too much, silly.”

“Nicole Haught,” she blurts out instantly, as if it will earn her more water. “Nicole Haught.”

Waverly’s eyes go wide for a moment before she nods. Her voice goes soft. “Hi there, Nicole Haught.”

“Hi,” Nicole murmurs. “Can I please have more water?”

“In a bit,” Waverly replies. Her eyes have gone soft, too, and her hand squeezes Nicole. “Do you know where you are?”

“A hospital?” Nicole ventures.

Waverly’s eyes light up. “The infirmary. You were in pretty bad condition when we found you. Do you remember how long you were outside the wall for? What unit you were a part of? Who your unit leader was?”

Nicole blinks.

Waverly tries a new tactic. “How old are you?”

“Twenty one.”

Waverly flinches. “You weren’t—you weren’t ever behind the wall, were you?”

“The what?”

Waverly’s hand tightens in Nicole’s, ever so slightly, before relenting. “How long were you alone out there for? Do you know where you are right now?”

“In…a hospital?” Nicole tries. Her head is beginning to swim again. Her toes wiggle for a moment to keep her grounded. She can’t fade out, not when this pretty girl is trying so hard to talk to her and she’s been _desperate_ for some human interaction for seven months.

“Let me—here.” The cup is against her lips again and it’s like a shot of adrenaline; she gulps down the water again like she hasn’t had a thing to drink in years until Waverly is pulling the cup back. “Feel better?”

Nicole nods. And she does.

“Okay.” Waverly takes a big breath. “We found you about three miles south passed out in an old med shop. You were super bruised and battered and unconscious. Do you have any memory of getting there?”

Faintly, maybe, but it’s blurry. Most of the past seven months have been a blur, if Nicole is going to be honest with herself. She shakes her head. Waverly’s free hand rubs against her forehead as if to quell an impending headache. “Do you think we could psychoanalyze her brainwaves if Moody—” a voice to her left starts, and Nicole realizes she had almost forgotten about the olive-skinned boy. Her head cranes his direction. “Jeremy Chetri!” he exclaims excitedly, cutting himself off as they make eye contact. “BBD scientist.”

He holds out his hand. She stares at it.

“Jeremy, now is really not the time,” Waverly hisses.

“Right.” Jeremy nods, unabashed, then murmurs, “Timing Jeremy, come on,” to himself. He spins to face a monitor behind him.

“Now.” Waverly refocuses her attention on Nicole and it’s like getting blasted by a ray of sunshine. Warm, safe, comforting. That smile is killer. “How long were you on your own out there? A few days? A few weeks?”

“Seven months,” Nicole whispers. “Seven months.”

Waverly’s smile drops. “You’ve been on your own since…”

“Since the plague started. I thought…” Nicole bites her lip to keep hard to keep the onslaught of tears from falling that she knows absolutely will if she doesn’t do something about it. “I thought I was the only one left.” Waverly is staring at her with something Nicole wouldn’t quite classify as pity, but she isn’t sure. “The only person left.” If living on her own has taught her anything in the past seven months, it’s that she can’t be weighed down by her own emotions. She’d already had the fate of humanity resting on her shoulders. That was heavy enough.

Waverly laughs, but it’s small and comforting in its own way. “No, you’re—you’re clearly not the last one left. Sometimes it feels like there are too many of us behind the wall.” She bites her lip and lets out a meek laugh that feels more for Nicole’s sake than anything.

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many of you? Behind the…” Nicole glances around for a moment as if looking for this aforementioned wall. “...wall.”

Waverly shrugs. “A few hundred, maybe.”

Nicole’s eyes about pop out of her head. “A few _hundred_.” Her head digs into the pillow in disbelief. “And you…you found me in a store a few miles out?”

“On a run,” Waverly confirms. “Is this too much? Do you need to sleep more?”

Nicole shakes her head, desperate. “Why the hell were you on a run in zombie-infested woods?”

“A—no. A run is where you and your unit go out and get supplies for behind the wall. In our case it was medicine. Anything we could get our hands on, which is how we ran into you. We were on a run and my older sister, Wynonna, found you. So a guy in our unit carried you back behind the wall. You were—you were asleep for three days. I came and visited as often as I could, but it’s been Jeremy taking care of you when I couldn’t be here. Nedley gave me special clearance to come take care of you when I wasn’t training, and I spent the nights here—”

“Nedley?”

“The guy who runs this whole thing. Decides which units to send out and who are running for the day, what it’s their job to get. That’s what everyone in between eighteen and twenty nine is, a runner. Our job to go get and get supplies.” Nicole nods. Her free hand absently reaches for the water again. Waverly doesn’t stop her. “Stop me if you’re getting overwhelmed,” she says, and waits for Nicole’s nod to continue.

“Black Badge Division, BBD, oversees everything, specifically Richard Moody. They’re the ones who put up the wall and got people behind it as soon as the plague started. Wynonna and I got sucked in almost as soon as it was up. Everyone here did.”

“How’d they…how’d they build it so fast?”

Waverly shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked.”

“And I’ll—I’ll be a runner when I’m out of here.”

Waverly nods. Something in her eyes goes cold.

“Which you’re free to do,” Jeremy adds. He spins in his chair. “Your vitals check out. I’d suggest another nap or two but you can be out of here by five, if you want. If you stay past five I have to keep you for the night.”

Nicole nods before turning back to Waverly. “So this wall—it keeps us in?”

“It keeps the infecteds out,” Waverly replies. “Everyone has got a job back here. Farmers, technicians, we’re our own little city. Purgatory. It…it works. It’s been working. It’s no Canada, but it’s. Well.” She shrugs and shoots Nicole that smile that makes her heart jump into her throat. “It’s Purgatory.”

“Purgatory.” Nicole repeats absently. Maybe another nap isn’t a terrible idea, after all.

* * *

Nicole’s hands drag against the cool tile of the dorms as she walks. She imagines her fingers leaving scorch marks as she passes but perhaps it’s wishful thinking. She’d managed to sneak in another nap on the premise that Waverly would be there when she woke up and had been out by four. Jeremy had seemed odd after she’d woken up, almost insisting that she stay, but if that wasn’t where Waverly was going to be, then it sure as hell wasn’t where Nicole wanted to be.

He’d only let her check herself out after promising that she’d be back for bloodwork the next day. She supposed there were still a few more vitals he wanted to check out.

She had survived for seven months alone, after all. She had to be some sort of medical anomaly at this point. A check-up or two wasn’t out of bounds, but Jeremy had seemed _off_ when he’d requested it.

She had brushed it aside with the idea that Jeremy was a weird kid and moved on.

“You seem nervous,” Nicole ventures after a moment.

Waverly’s fingers, which had previously been twining together in front of her, snap down to her side. “I’m not—I’m not nervous,” she says. Her voice shakes. “This is your room. There’s a bed and a mirror and a bathroom. Should be soap and a toothbrush in there since it’s…well, I’m sure it’s been a while since you’ve gotten to brush your teeth.”

Nicole immediately feels self conscious about her breath, which, admittedly, is awful beyond compare. Waverly smiles and reaches her hand out to Nicole’s bicep. “So you rescued me, huh?”

“Well, no. Technically it was Wynonna who found you and Dolls who carried you back to camp, I just…I just carried the bags. I’m the equivalent of an intern, I guess.”

“So you’re not over eighteen, then?” Something flares in Nicole’s chest at the thought of Waverly not having to run; something so hopeful that it’s almost dangerous.

“No, I’m…eighteen,” Waverly says after a moment, like the word burns her tongue. Whatever spark of hope Nicole has immediately fizzles out. She can feel the scorch marks from the wall burn into her ribcage. “Anyway, you, uh. You can’t leave the room after dark around here. It’s like a curfew. Keeping track of everyone thing. They won’t lock you in or anything, but there are guards that patrol the halls at night to make sure. It’s a safety measure. You’re pretty special,” Waverly says. Her face goes red and her last words stutter out. “Because you’re one of the last humans alive! Not because you’re…well, I mean, you _are_ special, I’m sure, but I meant because we’re trying to keep humanity alive and—”

“Thanks, Waverly,” Nicole assuages. She has the urge to lean in and kiss Waverly’s forehead and wrap her in a hug, but instead she ducks her head. Instead she slips into her room and closes the door as Waverly’s footsteps fade down the hallway.

* * *

 Nicole had almost forgotten the color of her own skin—it had been caked in dirt and blood for so long that she had been almost sure her fingernails had turned brown permanently. The water is warm against her head as her fingers massage through her hair, tearing at the knots relentlessly until it burns her scalp and red hair falls away into her fingers and down the shower drain.

She can’t remember the last time anything felt so good.

She has to go through two bars of soap to completely clean herself off. The bathroom is stocked well enough with the generics; mint toothpaste and a bamboo toothbrush are next on her hit list. The bathroom is clogged with steam when she finally turns off the showerhead and wraps herself in a towel. It’s fairly worn from what she imagines to be copious amounts of washes, but it’s soft and it’s clean and it nearly brings tears to Nicole’s eyes.

Her scars don’t look at half as bad now that they’re clean. She can’t help but think that the lacerations in her mind feel much the same way.

Long fingers glide over the counter, cheap plastic designed to look like grandiose marble. A pair of scissors resides next to a comb Nicole refuses to bother with and her fingers scrape over them, cool and damp, wrapping around them before she’s aware of what she’s doing.

The knots she was unable to remove in the shower are heavy against her skull, weighing her down, and her fingers make quick work of them. Clumps of red hair hit the ground with wet smacks, and each glide of metal takes another pound from her chest until it’s even enough, shoulder length, and frankly, the best Nicole has ever god damn looked.

The toothbrush is next with an overly generous amount of toothpaste, but now is not the time for skimping.

Her gums are raw when she’s done and it’s on the same tangential path as how she felt pulling at her own hair until she knots relented— _clean._ Like a goddamned new person. Inconquerable.

A gray jumpsuit waits for her on the bed identical to Waverly’s. It’s softer on the inside than she expects, but maybe everything feels soft when all she’s worn for the past seven months is the same shirt and pair of jeans, hardly more than shreds.

* * *

  _The hallway is different now, blurrier, like a poor video game render. It’s darker, too, as Nicole’s fingers trace against the wall. She can’t feel the stone under her fingers anymore, only the cool radiation against it. Her fingers are colder, somehow. Purgatory, she thinks._

_The door leading to the outside of the compound gives away as her shoulder pushes against it. An involuntary grunt leaves her mouth. She hasn’t been to this part of the compound yet; it’s where Jeremy told her to go yesterday for bloodwork. She hadn’t had the chance to check it out._

_She stumbles past some firewood, burned and blackened at her feet._

_Everything gets foggier. Her head starts to spin. She thinks she can feel something against her teeth, but she can’t tell. Not when everything is spiraling all of a sudden. Her vision begins to fade, go dark, until she’s sinking into it, and black is all she knows._

* * *

 Nicole wakes up to a strange taste in her mouth—her morning breath has been killer as of late but she hadn’t expected to wake up to it today, not after rubbing her teeth raw last night. Survival instincts don’t switch off after seven months of fleeing and her feet hit the cool tile of the floor before she’s even fully awake. She doesn’t need to be yet; her body is on autodrive.

The bathroom is the first stop to get the taste out of her mouth. Eyes drooped with sleep, she pushes her way in and feels for the toothbrush while flicking the lights on with her other hand. Blinding.

Her eyes snap open at what she sees. Her mouth, coated in blood. _Fresh_ blood.

Her feet carry her backwards in shock until she intercepts the door of the shower and her hand claps over the bottom half of her face. Her head shakes, desperately trying to wake up. She wants to believe it’s not real, it can’t be, but her hand drags away and the blood is merely smeared even more across her cheeks.

“Shit,” Nicole hisses. Scalding water pours from the faucet as soon as it’s on and Nicole smears it over her face. Maybe heat of the water will burn away the memory of it, as well. A pink tint overtakes her cheek the harder she scrubs until blood no longer remains. Half the bristles on her toothbrush have disappeared by the time she’s done with that, as well.

Her hands trace the rest of her body looking for cuts; maybe she bit her lip overnight, but her lips are fine and so is the rest of her body. No new cuts, nothing to indicate that the blood could have come from any part of her. She could have bitten her tongue overnight; mouth injuries heal fast, and yet, her stomach sinks down to her feet. Something isn’t connecting and—  

There’s a sharp rap at the door and Nicole’s head knocks back in surprise. She shakes her head to clear it and put on her best face before she leaves the bathroom and swings it wide. “Waverly—” she starts, but Waverly’s not listening.

Her eyes are wide with surprise and her lip shakes as she speaks. A bouquet of wildflowers are clenched in white fingers. “Nicole,” she says, shell shocked. “Malcolm was killed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope ya liked chapter 2, kudos and comments make a happy author who can provide more content
> 
> see ya next Thursday for chapter 3!


	3. Copper Tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole's first day outside of the hospital doesn't quite go as planned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my parting knowledge before I let you kids run free is that not everything is as it seems, and a lot of trivial details matter
> 
> also I made Nicole 21 cause I felt like 18/23 was kinda pushing it a bit

Nicole thinks that maybe the blood that she had scraped from her mouth moments previous had actually stored itself in her gums and begins to seep back against her tongue. The taste of copper floods her mouth and she forces herself to swallow it down. “Who’s Malcolm?”

The whites of Waverly’s eyes hide a little further as her eyelids lower, eager for a change in topic. “Ramaker. Malcolm Ramaker. He’s—he was one of the runners. Unit 11, I think. He—they found his body outside the Homestead this morning.” Nicole vague registers someone, maybe Jeremy, telling her that her dorm is called the Homestead, although she doesn’t remember why. Maybe she can ask Waverly about that later when there isn’t a more pressing matter on their hands. Waverly’s head shakes as she continues. “It’s not uncommon for people to die outside of the wall, it happens nearly every day, frankly, but this—” Her voice lowers as she glances around. “No one has ever been killed in the compound before. People have died of old age or whatever, sure, but…no one’s ever been killed.”

“Who did it?” Nicole croaks.

“Animals, they think. I guess he looked pretty torn up when they found him. BBD is looking into it but our meeting this morning is about him. A tribute or something. They don’t seem to think it’s a huge deal.” She glances down and tries to twirl her hands together and then freezes, as if just now realizing she’s holding flowers. “Oh, I…I was going to bring these for you. For your first official day here. You know, not in the hospital.” After a moment of thought, she holds them out to Nicole.

“Thanks,” Nicole whispers as she buries her nose into them; she wonders if Waverly can hear how choked up she is. She can’t remember the last time she’d seen a flower, much less a whole bouquet of them.

“Yeah, yeah, I was happy to.” Waverly’s hand cups the back of her neck and rubs furiously. “Almost worth getting caught stealing them from the garden to make sure you felt at home—or as home as you can feel in an apocalyptic hideaway, I guess. Mercedes the gardner is just absolutely the sweetest to let me have some flowers and—your hair!” She squeals.

Nicole’s fingers immediately wind through it to make sure it’s okay until she remembers she’d cut it off the night before and her cheeks instantly go pink. “My hair,” she repeats. “It was…I wanted to get rid of it and there was a pair of scissors on the counter.”

“You look good,” Waverly breathes. Her eyes go wide and her cheeks redden. “I mean your hair! Looks good. You, uh, you cut it.” The words seem to trip as they tumble from her mouth and Nicole laughs.

“We clarified that already.”

“We…did. We should, uh. We should get going. Nedley loses his shit when anyone is late to things and I’m sure it wouldn’t look good for either of us if I made you late for your first meeting."

If Nicole is being honest, Waverly Earp could make her late for just about anything and she’s not sure she’d give a single damn.

* * *

 Nedley’s already in the room by the time they arrive, standing in the front of the cafeteria, surveying from behind a table. “He’s been like that for ten minutes,” Wynonna whispers into Waverly’s ear as soon as she sits, dragging Nicole down with her. “Everyone got quiet when he came in at first, but now we don’t know what he’s doing. I have a bet with Dolls that the stick up his ass ruptured his voice box.”

“You’re revolting,” Waverly replies as her thumb digs into the side of an orange. She can feel Nicole stiff beside her and nudges her inconspicuously.

A loud crash from the front of the room has the chatter in the mess hall falling into silence and all heads swiveling towards Nedley. Only this time it’s not just him at the front, but someone else, slumped on top of the table he had slammed his fist into. Someone who looks…wrong.

“Malcolm Ramaker,” Nedley says, and the silence becomes so loud that Nicole thinks it might swallow her whole. She can hear the sound of her own heart beating in her chest, the rush of blood in her ears, the taste of copper on her tongue. Nedley’s hand pushes against the shoulder of the body curled in on itself on the table and it unfurls, limp limbs flopping against the table. A singular arm falls over the edge to dangle at the side, lifeless.

Some people gag.

Pale skin and unseeing bloodshot eyes, scraggly hair mated with dirt and blood. “Malcolm Ramaker was killed by animals last night. We lost a good runner because he couldn’t figure out what the word ‘curfew’ meant, and now the rest of humanity may very well suffer due to his actions. We have been lax on curfew requirements, but this ain’t the case anymore. If you are caught outside your rooms past curfew.” His eyes rolls over the crowd for a moment. “There _will_ be consequences, something Ramaker learned the hard way.”

Something about the way Malcolm looks has Nicole’s nerves shot. He almost looks—

“Unit 12!” Nedley barks. “You have ten minutes to get your asses to the gate today. Unit 2, you’re running tomorrow.”

Nicole feels a shake against her shoulder but her mind can’t reel in on it—her eyes have focused on the bite in Malcolm’s neck, visible even from the back of the dining hall. It really does look animalistic, pairing the scratches adorning his face and shoulders. Her eyes traipse down to her fingernails but they’re clean (if not just the tiniest bit jagged and unkept; she supposes that living in the wilderness for seven month would have that effect).

Another shake jolts her and registers Waverly’s voice, sweet and calm in her ear. “Nicole? Are you okay? You look a thousand miles away in there.”

“Yeah.” Nicole shakes her head to clear the image of Malcolm. “Yeah, just a bit…a bit shaken up.”

Waverly nods and runs her hand over Nicole’s back in comfort; her hand feels slow and warm and Nicole melts into the touch almost instantly. The act of physical comfort she’d received had been…so long ago but that it’s fuzzy now, a memory of a memory.

“I bet,” Waverly murmurs. “Tell you what. Why don’t we go get some hot chocolate in the kitchen? It’s absolute shit but I know where they keep the extra sugar.”

“That would actually be really sweet, Waverly, I—”

“Haught,” says a voice, directly into her ear, and she about flies out of her seat in surprise. Wynonna rolls her eyes and takes a bite of stale bread. Randy Nedley leans with his hand against the table, towering over Nicole. “How you holdin’ up? I know it can be tough tryin’ to accommodate to life behind the wall. Do you need anything?”

Nicole blinks. This is coming from the man who, moments previous, had chastised a dead body for, well, getting dead in the first place. “I’m doing alright, sir.”

“Good, good.” He nods and claps a hand over Wynonna’s shoulder, who suddenly looks like she’d rather be anywhere unless than under his palm. “You’re joinin’ Unit 4 for runs. I’m sure they’d be happy to show you the ropes.”

“She could join the group that lost Malcolm,” Wynonna pipes.

“Nah, they had one too many anyway.” His hand slaps against her shoulder before he ambles away.

Wynonna frowns through her bite of bread. “Alright, if you’re going to be part of our group, then we’re going to set a few ground rules, Red, because I’m not going to get my ass eaten because you’re not listening to me.”

“You have to hear how that sounds.”

“Context, Waverly!” Wynonna snaps. “First of all, Red, I am your _god_. Second, you have to trust me. Infallibly. When we’re behind that wall and I say jump you ask how fuckin’ high.”

“Lay off, Wynonna,” Waverly says and Wynonna’s head whips around to her.

“Waves,” she says, and her voice drops an octave. “You know what happens when people go behind that wall.” Her eyes drone into Nicole’s, attempting to dislodge her secrets. “It changes them. No one survives out there for more than a day alive. And if they do? They aren’t right in the head, and—”

“I said _lay off!_ ” Waverly hisses, crawling to her feet, and Nicole feels something that feels terrifyingly like affection wash over her chest for Waverly as her hand wraps around her arm and drags her up as well. “Jesus, Wyn. Stop being an asshole for like, thirty seconds. God.”

Wynonna blinks in surprise and sits back.

“Haught!” A voice permeates through the din of the crowd, hardly perceptible but there nonetheless. “Haught!” Jeremy Chetri weaves his way through the tables, skirting around runners as if scared he could catch an infection from them.

“You are quite nimble on your feet, Jeremy,” Doc drawls as he makes his way over. “I do thoroughly believe they are makin’ a mistake by not lettin’ you into the ranks.”

Jeremy stops dead in his tracks as a blush creeps over his cheeks. Nicole can see his tongue shifting in his mouth as he tries to turn out a response, and she wants to laugh as she realizes what’s happening in between his stutters.

Gay panic strikes another victim.

“Y-yeah, I took ballet when I was younger, I, uh.” He rubs the back of his neck furiously in search of more words. “I don’t really run, uh, but if _you_ wanted to hang out sometime, I mean, I wouldn’t, uh, I wouldn’t say no to that!” Maybe the back of his neck has answers, Nicole supposes, because he’s sure as hell trying to find them there.

“Perhaps,” Doc answers and gives him a hearty clap on the lower back.

Jeremy squeaks as his eyes fall towards Nicole, then immediately shift as though remembering something. “Nicole! Bloodwork. That starts today.”

“Bloodwork? Something you’re not telling us, Haughtstuff?” Wynonna asks, then winces and scowls at Waverly as her hands go to massage her leg under the table. It’s impressive, almost, that Waverly managed to kick her from across the table while standing.

“Oh, you know.” Jeremy’s hands rub at the back of his neck faster. “We just have to check and make sure she’s alright. She was behind the wall for seven months, after all. Just a bit of a safety precaution, really.”

Something about the way his says it doesn’t sit right in Nicole chest.

“Well.” Wynonna’s eyes grate up Nicole for a moment, harsh. “She looks just fine to me. In excellent condition for someone who lived on their own for seven months.” Her head cocks to the side and her eyes narrow.

“ _Wynonna_ ,” Waverly snarls. Her voice takes on a dangerous lilt and Wynonna’s shoulders relax every so slightly. She must know which battles to pick with Waverly, and this isn’t one of them. “C’mon, Nicole, let me walk you to the lab. I’m sorry about Wynonna.” Her fingers twine through Nicole’s a pull until she has no choice to follow.

* * *

 “You need to give her a chance,” Dolls says. His arm wraps protectively around Wynonna’s side and pull her into him. Her head rests against his shoulder as she harrumphs. “Imagine it from her point of view. She’s scared, she surrounded by new people, and she spent the last seven months thinking she was on her own.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” Wynonna says. Her fingers trace the outline of Dolls’s palm like a worry stone. “I that I just don’t…trust her.”

“You don’t trust anyone,” Dolls replies.

Wynonna frowns.

* * *

 “You okay there, Nicole? You seem a bit on edge.”

“I’m fine!” Nicole snaps, and that’s what makes her realize that she probably isn’t. Waverly had dipped out a few minutes ago to train after leaving the dining hall and Jeremy had begun leading her to the lab.

Jeremy takes a step back in surprise, foot colliding with something on the ground. The morning air is cool against Nicole’s skin, foggy, almost, and her eyes flick down to see what he hit.

A pile of firewood, burned and blackened at his feet.

The exact one from her dream.

“Let’s go inside,” she hisses and pushes herself through the lab doors. If Jeremy’s curious about her outburst, he keeps it to himself and leads her to his room. It’s small and unkept with various unnamed thinking floating in vials of liquid on shelves surrounding the room. Offhandedly she notices a hand of sorts, severed at the wrist, floating in what she assumes to be formaldehyde, if high school taught her anything. Something bubbles softly in the corner. Cups of coffee, mostly empty and crushed, litter every surface available and flood parts of the floor. “It’s a bit messy,” Jeremy says, as if it isn’t blatantly obvious.

“No shit, sherlock,” Nicole murmurs. She takes a seat on the only chair not covered in overturned vials and glances around as she extends her wrist and pulls the sleeve of her jumpsuit up her arm. “Let’s get this over with.”

Some small part of her wishes Waverly were there. Just a little.

* * *

  _Her fingers itch, right underneath the fingernails, and it’s absolutely torture, the only thing she can focus on. Thousands of bugs run under her skin and tear through her muscles. Her mind spins faster than she can counteract it. Feet slither against wet grass, damp with pre-morning dew as her body traipses outside, but that’s not her focus._

_Her fingernails burn. Hands outstretched, desperate for any form of contact, anything she can dig them into for relief._

_Either she trips over her own feet or something takes her down by force but suddenly there’s something soft and slightly warm against her hands, burning to the stone-cold radiance of her fingers, and she’s digging in before she can help herself. The burn doesn’t subside, not at first, so she digs in harder, harder, until she’s sure her fingernails might rip clean off._

_The smell of lavender kits her nose so strongly that she almost doubles over at its intensity. Gardens, she realizes when the burn fades into a dull itch. She’s in some gardens._

_Her head spins harder until she might be retching but she’s not sure, as a black haze begins to overtake the sides of her eyes, smothering her line of vision until it suffocates in front of her._

* * *

 A cold sweat beads on the back of Nicole’s neck as she flies out of bed, hands wiping at her eyes before she’s fully awake. Her tongue rolls over the sides of her cheek, her teeth, scouring for any taste of copper, but none arises. It’s still dark out, a pale moon illuminated against the stark navy blue of a sky sprinkled with stars.

Fingers shake as they reach over for the bedside light. The lamp flickers for a moment before it turns on, as if in warning that she may not like what she sees, and she realizes she should’ve heeded it as the bulb glows steady.

There’s blood underneath her fingernails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave kudos and comments if you like it! you guys really have no idea how much it helps the author
> 
> also, just for the record, a certain user and I are coming out with a new fic pretty soon, and you won't want to miss it if daddy haught is your thing........


	4. Lavender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly takes Nicole on a tour of Purgatory, where they stumble across a garden that Nicole thinks is all too familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **note:** I made Nicole 21 because I felt like 18/23 was pushing it. anyway so now Nicole is 21. 
> 
> foreshadowing is a bitch and so am I

“Hey.” Waverly pokes her head around the door as her fist knocks against it. Red hair flurries around a pair of sleepy eyes, not yet open enough to be considered fully awake. She looks exhausted. “You awake in there?”

Nicole murmurs something unintelligible. Waverly’s heart soars of its own accord at the sound of her raspy mumble as it seeps across the floor of the room. “What was that?”

Nicole grunts and rolls from the mess of blankets and— _oh dear god, she’s only in underwear and a tank top_ , Waverly thinks, and tears her eyes away as a heavy flush overtakes her cheeks. For having lived on her own for seven months, she looks  _good_.

Waverly swallows down her nerves. “Can I come in?”

Nicole’s hand waves absently in confirmation as she digs through a pile of identical jumpsuits in the corner until she finds one she considers clean enough and begins to slide into it. “Morning,” she mumbles as her hands work to zip the jumpsuit up and drag her feet into her boots and ambles into the bathroom.

“Sleepyhead.”

“Hmph.”

“You ready for breakfast?” she calls. Nicole’s head appears around the corner, toothbrush half submerged in her mouth and a brush knotted into her hair. She glares and disappears again. The sink runs for a moment and then Nicole reappears and pulls Waverly to her feet from where she sits on the bed and cocks her head.

“Yeah.”

Waverly’s wrist burns where Nicole’s hands have enclosed them and her eyes trace over her fingers, long and slender. Her hands are surprisingly soft, clean. It takes her a moment to realize that she hasn’t moved, hasn’t made any effort to actually _go_ to breakfast. The blush on her cheeks darkens and spreads to the back of her neck as she glances back up. “We should—so, let’s, I mean. Let’s go to breakfast then.”

“We should,” Nicole agrees softly. Her hands stay attached to Waverly’s wrist and pull away a moment after, lingers down her palms and fingertips as she pulls away. “Waves, did—” She stops herself short and bites her lip, eyes making level with the ground for a moment. “Did anyone else turn up last night?”

Waverly, whose breath had been held in her chest so tightly she thought her lungs might have exploded, expels a breath and shrugs nonchalantly. “I mean, I’m sure Wynonna smuggled some booze in last night with Dolls and Doc but other than that—”

“No, no, Waves. I mean did anyone turn up…you know. Dead.” Her voice drops an octave on the last word, so quiet Waverly would have missed it had her eyes not been glued to Nicole’s lips.

“What? Why?”

Nicole’s eyes flick to her hands for a moment as one of her fingernails digs under the other. “No reason. I’m just a bit spooked from Malcolm, that’s all. I wanted to make sure no one else got hurt.”

A smile, however slight, overtakes Waverly’s lips and her hand traces up to Nicole’s arm where she squeezes reassuringly and _holy hell does she have biceps_. “That’s really sweet, Nicole. I haven’t heard of it. It was just a freak accident, I’m sure. And BBD is looking into it but they’re saying it’s animals for now.” Misreading Nicole’s concern, she shoots her a smile. “Don’t worry. You’re safe, I promise.”

Nicole can only offer a small one back.

* * *

 The words, “animal attack” frequent the cafeteria as Nicole trails behind Waverly to get her food. Her mind is miles away, light years away, and she can’t drop the feeling in the pit of her stomach that nothing is adding up. She put two and two together and somehow managed to get thirteen.

She’s fairly positive that isn’t how math works.

Only Dolls seems to be even slightly invested in what Jeremy’s saying when they make it to the table—his hands move in accordance to his words, too fast to understand. Dolls nods and smiles but his eyes are vacant, not unkindly; Jeremy is a lot on a good day. His eyes light up as he turns to her, lab coat furrowing behind him as she scootches over to make room.

“Haught,” Dolls greets. The relief in his voice is evident— _your turn to manage him._

“Nicole!” Jeremy squeals simultaneously. “Just the person I was looking for. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”

“Uh—”

“What did you eat when you were behind the wall? I can imagine you couldn’t stick to a very firm regiment if you’re like, vegan or something. Were you able to identify different berries and plants to survive?”

“I—”

“And how often were you running into the infecteds out there? Was it a daily thing? How did you fall asleep, knowing they could attack you at any minute? Did you have anyone you were partnered up with to survive?”

Nicole’s blood begins to pound in her ears as he continues. The walls are caving in and the table is pushing her out. Snippets from life behind the wall start to flash in front of her, however scarce. It had been hectic to say the least, and she could only vaguely remember parts at most.

If she had to classify it, she would say that she had been on autopilot for the majority of the time.

“Nicole.”

A soft voice cuts through the mayhem and lands against her shoulder. She focuses in on it; _Nicole, Nicole_ , until she realizes that it’s Waverly whispering into her ear. A cool hand presses against her own, clenched so tightly in her lap that her fingers have gone white. “Are you okay?”

Nicole’s eyes snap towards her. Her chest heaves. “What?”

“Are you okay?” Waverly asks again. Her fingers wrap a little tighter around Nicole’s.

Jeremy’s stopped talking. The whole table regards her with a sort of pitiful curiosity. Except for Wynonna, whose arms have crossed over her chest as she leans back, eyes hard. They rake over Nicole for a moment before flicking down to where her hand meets Waverly’s, then back up to her face. Her eyes harden further.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. Waverly’s hands hold her down to earth.

“She acts like Willa,” Wynonna says, but there’s nothing soft about her voice. There’s nothing forgiving, nothing Nicole can latch onto. “When Willa came home from the military. You remember.”

“ _Wynonna_ ,” Waverly hisses. Her thumb strokes over the ridge of Nicole’s hand as she shoots her sister a look that equates to, _not now._

“I’m just saying.” Wynonna’s hands flick down to her nail beds and she picks at it, casual. “Willa acted like that because she’d seen some shit. People who see shit show it.”

“I’m serious, Wynonna,” Waverly snaps. Her hand comes down hard on the table and her voice takes on a dangerous lilt, something Nicole herself would be frightened to be on the receiving end of. “Stop it. You don’t get to act like that. She’s my sister, too.”

Wynonna leans forward; Dolls’s hand snakes over Wynonna’s shoulder. Her head tilts. “She sure was, babygirl. But now she’s fucking dead.” And then she grabs her tray and whisks away, Dolls and Doc calling after her.

“Waves,” Nicole starts, “I—I’m so sorry, I—”

“No, no.” Waverly breathes out hard and her hands wave Nicole off. “I’m sorry for her. She’s…she’s been dealing with a lot lately and she’s…well, she’s not great at it.” She laughs, but it lacks warmth. “It’s really nothing against you. She’ll come around. She’s just got a grudge against the world.” That smile that makes Nicole weak in the knees gets sent her way.

That’s when she realizes something.

She has a crush on Waverly Earp, and if it doesn’t kill her first, something else will.

* * *

 “So. The training room.” Waverly’s hand gestures wide and Nicole works to pick her jaw off the floor.

To be honest, it’s hardly more than a room with weights stacked in various piles around it and a few workout machines that have seen better days, but it still blows Nicole away.

_How in the hell did they have time to build a workout room in the midst of a fucking apocalypse?_

“We come here to train if we’re not busy. It’s not really enforced too much because you train at your own risk, but, well.” Waverly shrugs. “The more in shape you are the faster you can run. It’s like a really sick version of Darwinism.”

Nicole snorts.

“Were you big on sports in your youth?” Waverly’s fist connects with Nicole’s shoulder jokingly and grins.

“Huh?”

The grin on Waverly’s face plummets. “Oh—just because, I meant, like. Since you’re in such good shape! Not that I’ve noticed! I mean, I have, but only because you…did you play sports?” Waverly’s teeth dig into her lower lip as a blush begins to seep from the back of her neck to her cheeks.

“That depends. Do you consider trying to get my parent’s attention by smoking out behind the church every sunday while they were in it a sport?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, I played basketball too in high school. What about that?”

“More like it.” Waverly grins again.

“But god, that would’ve been, what, three years now since I graduated?” She rubs the back of her neck as her mind wanders back. “Crazy stuff. And you…” Her eyes trail over to Waverly. “You never got to graduate, did you?”

“Oh.” Waverly sighs and throws on a smile Nicole can tell is faked. “No, but it wasn’t a big deal. We have a few more pressing matters to attend right now.”

“Waves!” Someone shouts from the other ends of the gym and Wynonna runs over, clad in workout gear and sweating profusely. “Have you seen John?”

“No,” Waverly replies flatly. Nicole supposes she isn’t quite done being pissed at her sister from breakfast. Fair enough.

“That motherfucker owes me a bottle of whiskey. I snatched him some cigarettes a few runs ago and he hasn’t paid up yet. Now he’s fucking avoiding me.”

“Hmm,” Waverly replies, disinterested, before shooting a look at Nicole and making her way off to the side to start warming up. She strips herself of a shirt, and _hello_ , that’s a six pack if Nicole has ever seen one.

“It’s not the right time for that, Red,” Wynonna says, and Nicole tears her eyes from Waverly, blushing upon realizing she’d been staring. “Nothing personal, really. Just not the time.”

“What?” Admittedly, her eyes have made their way back to Waverly. Specifically to where she executes pushups on the mat. The corner of Nicole’s mouth sags.

“You think I don’t see the way you look at her?”

“I don’t look—”

“Right, and I’m not bitter about John avoiding me for a pack of cigs. The point is, Red, that she’s my responsibility. She has been ever since…ever since a long time ago. So if you’re going to get to her, you’re going to have to go through me. It’s really nothing personal. But the last thing she needs to worry about is someone other than herself.”

“I’m not asking—”

“You’d better not be, Red.” Wynonna’s hand squeezes Nicole’s shoulder for a minute, just tight enough to be threatening if it has to be, and then she disappears to the other side of the room.

* * *

 “Are you sure? Because, like, if you’re busy we totally don’t have to. It’s just a suggestion.” Waverly’s hands squeeze together outside of the lab from where Nicole had just finished blood work again with an overly-exuberant Jeremy. “Plus I bet you must be exhausted, after training and bloodwork. You know what, it was a dumb idea, let me just walk you back to the Homestead—”

“Waverly.” Nicole’s hand squeezes Waverly’s shoulders and begins to follow her away from the lab. “Relax. I’d love a tour of the place.”

“I can’t really show you the whole thing, this place is huge.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“What?” Waverly cocks her head and regards Nicole with something similar to curiosity.

“I mean, I don’t know.” Nicole tries to keep her shrug nonchalant as she glances around. “It’s weird, isn’t it? That as soon as a zombie apocalypse happens, there’s already a giant wall up? _This_ big and fully functioning?”

“I guess. No one could really complain about it though, trying to survive and all that. And it didn’t really look like this at first. It was pretty shitty, just barely kept them out, but it was fortified from the inside out over time, if that helps. Do you want to visit the gardens? They’re my favorite place to go and…” Her voice fades off as Nicole sinks into thought—she knows Waverly’s still talking, animatedly so, and she wants to hear what she’s saying, but something about the wall nags her. She almost lets herself think about it further until a fat drop of water hits her in the face, startling her.

Her hand immediately goes to Waverly, as if to protect her, and snarls, “Get behind me!” then freezes when she hears laughing. “Waverly?” She wipes another droplet off her face but it’s no use; they start pouring heavier now, thicker, and oddly enough, rhythmic across her face.

Waverly’s making no move to shield herself and instead points up to where a series of pipes run over the roof of the garden, drizzling down. “You need to relax. They’re watering the gardens. C’mere.” She wraps her hand around Nicole’s bicep and pulls her out of the way of the mist under the safety of an underlying metallic roof nearby that houses herbs.

There’s the strong scent of lavender nearby.

Nicole’s heart rate quickens. “Are there other gardens?”

“No.”

“There are pipes everywhere just like those,” Nicole says. They run around different parts of campus, snake across walls and buildings. “They carry water, too?”

“Sure, hypothetically.” Waverly shrugs. “We’re the last of humanity as we know it, we really can’t suffer consequences like fires. It’s a safety precaution. One more thing I have to show you, though.”

The rain falls a bit harder and it keeps Nicole from noticing the playful lilt that adorns Waverly’s voice, and then she’s shoved back out into the rain. Her feet trip over themselves and she hits the ground hard, splashing mud up her nose. “Waverly!” she yells, but it turns into a laugh as Waverly crashed down a second after her.

There’s no way she isn’t filthy at this point. “I had to!” Waverly laughs. “You look like you haven’t smiled since you were a baby.”

“Jesus.” Nicole wipes herself off and offers her hand out to Waverly. “You’re probably right. But look at this? Pearly whites.” She gleans.

Oddly, Waverly blushes. She darts back under the comforting dryness of the makeshift shelter and beckons Nicole to follow her. “God, you’re sopping wet.”

“Hmm.” Nicole’s eyes flick over to a piece of rusted metal behind that helps characterize the building. It’s faded and hardly legible, but the word _shorty’s_ has been scratched into one of the plaques. “I didn’t know Shorty’s had wet t-shirt contests.”

“What?”

“Right there.” Nicole’s hands trace over it for a moment. “Shorty’s.”

She doesn’t notice how fixed on her fingers Waverly is.

* * *

 “Thanks for spending the afternoon with me.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for the free tour. Although I meant to ask. Why the Homestead? Why not call it Dorm A or B or whatever?” Nicole leans against the frame of her door—she’s grown to love these ritualistic drop-offs with Waverly every evening.

“There’s a few rumors here and there but it’s the dorm all the runners live in. To make us feel more at home, you know?” Her hand rubs against the back of her neck and before she’s fully aware that it’s happened, Waverly’s leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I’m really glad we found you on the run, Nicole,” she whispers, and then she disappears down the hallway before Nicole can get a single word in.

* * *

 The sound of the lock on her door clicking into place drops a weight into the pit of Nicole’s stomach. She has to know for sure.

She doesn’t dream that night, not that she knows of, not that she can remember, but the morning comes too soon.

The lock on her door is no longer engaged when the sun hits it.

There’s blood in her mouth and hair between her teeth in the morning and she’s vomiting into the toilet before she’s even fully awake, hacking sobs and dry-heaves over the bowl. She can’t feel the burn of the water as it sears her hands and face, can’t feel the nerves of her skin as she scrubs it raw.

Dreams or not, she can’t sleep anymore. Not when this is the consequence.

Cold water drips down her face, red and puffy, and seeps into her jumpsuit to sag around the collar.

No. She can’t sleep anymore if this is what it reduces her to, and she absolutely cannot tell a single soul. Not if she wants to be thrown outside the gate before she has time to defend herself. Not until she figures out what in the _hell_ is going on.

The knock at the door is painfully on time, and of course it’s Waverly, it’s always Waverly, waiting for her.

“Waverly,” she croaks as she cracks the door open.

“John’s dead,” Waverly replies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "they've been behind the wall this whole time! when are interesting things going to actually start happening?"
> 
> sooner than you think


	5. The Price of Whiskey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nedley makes an announcement. Nicole faces an ultimatum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmm.

“You’re crying,” immediately follows. Waverly’s face molds into something soft, caring, as her hands rest against Nicole’s shoulders. The skin on her face and hands has been rubbed to the point of being red and blotchy, and her eyes are puffy. _Something_ unnamed flares in her chest at the thought of Nicole like this, a pang of sadness and something else she’s too scared to look into for more than half a second for the sake of her sanity. “I’ve got you.”

“John’s dead?” Nicole hiccups.

“Yeah, well, he’ll stay that way but we need to make sure you calm down first,” Waverly says, then flinches. That might possibly be the _worst_ thing she could’ve said in the moment. “What’s going on? I’m here for you.”

 _You’re not_ , Nicole thinks. _No, no one is, not now_ , but she offers Waverly the most heartfelt smile she can muster and shakes her head. “Nothing, nothing, it’s just…” For a moment she considers, _genuinely_ considers, telling Waverly that she thinks she might be Purgatory’s latest serial killer running amuck at night biting heads off, but then her hands wave, nonchalant, in the air for a moment and she shakes her head. “It’s a lot. It’s new.”

“It is,” Waverly nods. “That’s okay. We all need a minute sometimes. We can stay here until you’re calm.” She glances up at the clock on the wall. “As long as you’re calm in the next two minutes.”

Nicole laughs, and a warmth floods her chest as a smile lights up Waverly’s face at the sound. “Yeah, I’m calm. Thanks, Waves.”

Her face floods red as Waverly presses another kiss to her cheek and then wraps her fingers around her wrist and pulls her towards the dining hall.

* * *

It’s silent in the dining hall when they arrive; even Wynonna’s silently shoveling spoonfuls of oatmeal into her mouth without so much as a witty quip at Nicole when she sits down. So something’s wrong.

There’s no longer a body on the table like she’d half been expecting, maybe John’s; instead Nedley sits behind it, surveying. The bags under his eyes have deepened. He grunts as he stands and eyes flick towards him. “As many of you have heard,” he starts, voice gruff. “We lost another man last night. John Nogier was found mauled to death in front of the labs this morning at 0400 hours by a patrol guard.”

“Oh, I am never getting that whiskey,” Wynonna breathes. Waverly kicks her under the table.

His eyes scan the room for a bit longer. They settle on nothing in particular, but rather move as if controlled by mechanics. “Purgatory is a big confinement. There are wild animals that lurk within these lands that will not take mercy on the remainder of humanity nor the lives that live behind these gates. We give you curfew for a reason. But what happened last night should serve as a reminder; just because you’re the last of humanity does _not_ give you a fuckin’ free pass on the rules, you hear me?”

The silence grows tight, heavy, suffocates Nicole.

“Because apparently Malcolm wasn’t enough, let this serve as a reminder. A _clear_ one this time.” He allows for the news to sink in before clearing his throat and rubbing a hand over his face. “Unit 11, you know the drill. Asses at the gate in ten. As for the rest of you, we can’t keep hidin’ it. Resources here are growin’ scarce. You hungry fucks are eatin’ more than we can grow.” It’s met with an appreciative (though scarce) chuckle that scatters through the cafeteria until it dies against Nedley’s feet. “So we really cannot afford to lose anymore of you, not if you’re the ones bringin’ what we need in.”

Then his eyes drill into Nicole’s and she knows he can see what she’s thinking as the words leave his lips. “Unit 4, you’re running tomorrow.”

Her stomach drops out from between her feet.

* * *

“Look, I don’t really get a say in it,” Jeremy says, hands up in surrender and he white-knuckles his clipboard. “They asked for your scan and I gave it to them. Healthy as a horse, you’ll be with trained individuals. You won’t even have to carry a gun!”

Nicole’s breath puffs out in anger as she corners him in his lab. “What about Waverly?”

“What about her?”

“Does she have a gun? Does she have a way to protect herself?”

“How would I know?” His chin nods over to the chair and she takes a breath to steady herself. “Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t,” she snaps. “It doesn’t.” His body sags in relief as she steps back and shakes her head before dropping herself into the chair. “I’m just nervous.”

“Wynonna’s team has never lost anyone,” he assures her. “She’s pretty stone-cold but it’s because she loves Waverly, and it keeps her team alive. She’d rather die before she let anyone lay a single finger on her sister, or anyone else in her group for that matter. You want the most chance of surviving, you got the best team for it.”

“Why don’t you run, huh?”

“Me?” Jeremy goes red and busies himself with starting to hook up electrodes to different parts of Nicole’s face. “I’m way too smart of a resource to lose and I’ve got great calves, so. It’s definitely not because I failed my firearms test three times.”

“And why am I still here? You said it yourself—healthy as a horse. Do I really need to still get blood work every day?” Despite saying it, she inherently knows that she trusts Jeremy. He wouldn’t need to give her a reason for her to stay; she’d willingly do so if he asked without specification. His hand finds the back of his neck and rubs.

“There are—there are a few things about you we still want to check out. You’re, uh, you’re a bit of an anomaly. We’re doing more tests because you’re so healthy—I mean, you survived completely on your own for seven months in the wilderness and—normally that sort of physical and emotional trauma would take some sort of toll on your body but you seem…healthy. I’m trying to figure out why.”

 _He knows_ , she thinks, _he must know_ , but she can’t bring herself to say anything. Instead she nods and reclines back against the seat as miniature snaps begin to resonate against her skull, gentle enough to lull her out of her mind, if only for a bit.

* * *

 Either Nicole finds mystery meatloaf with a side of stale bread incredibly interesting, or she’s ignoring Waverly.

She opts to believe the former.

“Nicole,” she murmurs as their knees knock together. Nicole’s eyes are glazed over, chewing on autodrive as she stares at the napkin basket in the center of the table. “ _Nicole_.”

Nicole blinks and her spine straightens to attention. “What? Were you talking to me?”

“I was _trying_ to,” Waverly huffs. “You okay in there? You’re a million miles away.”

She can taste blood in her mouth again, hair between her teeth, the burn under her fingernails. And the fact that she has to keep herself awake tonight and then go on a run tomorrow morning where a group of four individuals will be relying on her not to fuck it up should they all end up dead.

She offers the most genuine smile she can, which she’s sure probably resembles a frown, and nods. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m just…I’m a bit nervous, you know? My first run.”

Waverly nods and shoots Nicole that smile that tastes like sunshine against her teeth. Soft fingers intertwine with Nicole’s under the table and her heart rate jumps then settles into a comfortable rhythm against her chest. Calming. “Nothing is going to happen, you know. Wynonna’s our group leader.”

“Wynonna’s a hot mess.”

“Acquitted,” Wynonna replies and clinks her water glass with Nicole’s.

Waverly slaps Nicole’s shoulder. “My _point_ is that she’d never let anything happen to us.”

“Wouldn’t let anything happen to even you, Haught-stuff. Despite my best efforts, you’re growing on me.” Nicole grins. “Like a tumor, don’t go getting a big head,” Wynonna finishes with a frown. “And anyway, I’d make Doc or Dolls sacrifice themself before I let anything touch Waves.”

Dolls shakes his head, but he’s smiling.

Then, quietly, Waverly says, “Willa would’ve been proud of you, you know.”

The tension around the table changes, molds as Wynonna’s spine goes rigid. “I better not have heard you correctly, babygirl,” she whispers.

“But she would’ve,” Waverly argues. “You’re taking care of me, you’re—”

“ _Waverly!_ ” Wynonna snarls. Her hands collide with the table and then she’s out of the dining room before Waverly has time to release the breath she’s sucked into her lungs in surprise.

“I’m gonna go after her,” Dolls says.

“Count me in,” Doc replies.

And then there were two.

“I think I owe you a story,” Waverly whispers, eyes glued to the exit.

“Waves, no, you don’t have to.”

Waverly shakes her head. “No, if you’re going to be in our group then you need to understand some history. Willa was our sister, older than Wynonna by a few years. She was out of the house a lot when I was young so I don’t remember her very well, but she and Wynonna were thick as thieves. Two peas in a pod. They did everything together, especially after Mama left. I’m only Wynonna’s half sister—same mom as her and Willa, but a different dad. Mama left with him when I was six and the three of us stayed behind with their dad. He was.” Waverly blows out a breath and pinches the bridge of her nose. “He was a lot of things, but a good father was not one of them. He was an alcoholic, for one, and he put a gun in his mouth when I was as soon as he found out our mama left him.”

“Waves, I’m so sorry—”

Waverly’s hand waves Nicole off. “We moved in with our aunt and uncle but Willa was—Willa wasn’t ever the same after he did that. Emotionally vacant. Wynonna felt protective of us, and especially of Willa after she started spiraling. And me, of course, because I was just a kid without a mom or a dad. Willa ended up leaving for the military as soon as she was old enough and when she came back, she was sick. They think she got worked too hard without enough emotional support and…she died before the plague started. Which I know Wynonna is grateful for, Willa wouldn’t have done well in this sort of environment, but…” She sniffles and Nicole wraps an arm around Waverly’s shoulder in comfort.

“Wynonna couldn’t save our parents and then she couldn’t save Willa and now she’s worried that she won’t be able to save me. It haunts her every day.”

“I didn’t know,” she murmurs. “Maybe let’s get you to bed. We’ve got a long day in the morning.”

Something about the story leaves an odd taste in the back of her mouth, so she swallows it down and doesn’t think another thing of it.

* * *

 “This…this is your stop, I guess.”

“But of a tradition,” Nicole agrees as she leans against the frame of her closed door and smiles at Waverly, hands tucking into the pocket of her jumpsuit. Her voice lowers to hardly more than a whisper. “I’m…I’m scared, Waverly.” She lets absolute truth bleed into her words and she watches as they seep into Waverly’s jumpsuit and clench her heart in her chest.

“You don’t have to be,” Waverly replies, just as quiet. Her eyes are glued to Nicole’s lips, hands clenching in her pockets. Nicole wants to take them and let them wrap around her own. “Nothing will hurt you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about keeping safe,” Nicole replies, and then she sinks down and presses her lips against Waverly’s, hard. Her hands travel of their own accord to Waverly’s hips and pull her in closer, fingernails digging into her hip bones as Waverly’s lips open to accept more. Her own dig hungrily into Nicole’s hair and pull, hard, until Nicole is moaning against her lips and she pulls back, breathing heavily.

Waverly’s lips chase hers, if only for a moment, before her eyes fly open and she gasps. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Nicole,” she murmurs, her hands reaching up to her mouth. “I shouldn’t have done that. I need to…I need to go. It’s time for me to go.”

Her feet move without her mind, pleading with her to travel down the hallway, but a hand on her wrist stops her. “Stay,” Nicole whispers.

“What?”

The door clicks open and Nicole slides through, pulling Waverly with her. Hips meets hips and Nicole leans in halfway, waits for Waverly to close the gap before slamming the door behind them. The lock clicks into place. Teeth gnash against teeth and hungry hands roam, desperate for bare skin to mark again. “Stay,” Nicole pants and her fingers work the find the zipper on the the side of Waverly’s jumpsuit. “Stay, stay, stay.”

Waverly nods as her fingers do the same. They yank, pull, anything they can to reveal Nicole to her as quickly as she can. She wants, no, she _needs_ to feel Nicole beneath her, needs to be thrown to the edge of the world and dragged back, piece by piece.

She forces the jumpsuit off Nicole’s shoulder at the same time that Nicole manages to do so for her. She’s wearing a black sports bra and black panties, like every other fucking runner (herself included) but she makes it look so much _better_ somehow, and Waverly’s _hungry_.

Hands against her ass pull her up Nicole’s hips and she wraps her legs around them while her arms wrap Nicole’s shoulders. She dives down like Nicole’s a breath of fresh air and she’s been trapped underground for years until she's dizzy with kisses and bites and pulls and it’s not enough, it isn’t enough.

It isn’t enough until she’s being lowered and Nicole’s body is on top of hers against the bed. Her hands are everywhere, pulling against the last of her clothes and keeping her legs wrapped around her hips while she grinds down until Waverly’s reduced to a whimpering mess beneath her. She thinks she may be moaning something along the lines of _I need you_ , but it’s too late to know as she sinks herself into bliss against Nicole’s ministrations.

* * *

Nicole almost forgets the promise she had made herself that morning, to stay awake. But it’s hard, with Waverly’s warmth corrupting her as she curls against Nicole’s front. She looks so peaceful like this, so much younger than her years have forced her to be.

Her eyelids fight with her mind as they beg to stay open, stay awake.

But Waverly.

Her head hits the pillow as another bought of languor over washes her and forces her down.

She vaguely remembers the consequences of sleep as Waverly shifts against her and nestles further into her front, but it’s too late.

She starts to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> normally I try to include some form of notes before and after for you guys but really I cannot think of a single thing I have to say. stay gay, guys. see u next thursday


	6. The Tree with Gnarled Fingers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interesting things happen when you stick five trigger-happy kids into zombie infested forests

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look both ways before jumping to conclusions

Tired eyes peel open and survey the room, _her_ room. Hazy sunlight still reminiscent of a morning not yet fully born lights up a patch of floor, dusty, and warms the rest of the room with an orange glow. There’s a warmth wrapped in Nicole’s arms, one that she instinctively settles back into as her eyes begin to droop closed; she’d been having the most wonderful dream of life before the wall, only Waverly was there and not…

_Waverly_

Eyes that had once been plagued by sleep now shoot open, achingly awake, as her heart rate flares in her chest. Her tongue scrapes over her cheeks, her teeth, her lips, dreading any taste of blood she knows she’ll find.

But she never does.

Hyper focused, her eyes slide from the sunlight soaking into the floor to the door, where the lock is still engaged in the door handle from last night. Her nails are clean, fingers entwined with Waverly’s.

She slept throughout the night.

The thought has her heaving a gasp in some amalgam of relief and surprise as her fingers squeeze in excitement. Waverly ruffles against her. “Early,” she slurs as her hips adjust to increase her contact with Nicole. Her head tucks further against her chin; wild, unkempt hair no longer contained in the braid tickles Nicole’s nose.

“Morning,” Nicole whispers. Her lips, _clean_ lips, burn as they press a kiss to the underside of Waverly’s ear. “Look who’s the sleepyhead now.”

“Hmph.” Waverly frowns, but it’s short lived as she wiggles to face Nicole. Her eyes are bleary with sleep, unfocused, but they’re so intent on Nicole that something in her stomach flares at the thought, something warm. Something she hasn’t felt in so long, she isn’t quite sure she remembers the feeling of. “Mornin’.”

She waits for Waverly to notice blood on her face that she missed, to scream and throw herself from the bed, but it never comes as she surveys her for a moment before pressing her lips against her own; they’re soft and sweet and Nicole melts into them instantly. She can feel Waverly’s tongue working its way through her teeth and against her own. Hands curl in her hair, gentle, as she pulls back.

That damn smile that Waverly shoots her makes her insides melt. She’s exceptionally beautiful right now, more so, as the blankets don’t cover the pools of thin sunshine that fill the space of her collarbones.

Jumpsuits, outturned and kicked somewhere in the room, sprawl across the floor, but that’s for another time. Anything that isn’t Waverly is for another time.

“We’re going to be late for breakfast,” she murmurs as Nicole pulls her back in for another kiss.

“So let’s be late,” Nicole replies. Her hands snake under the covers to tease Waverly’s inner thighs.

And so they are.

* * *

“You seem chipper for someone about to plunge headfirst into zombie-infested waters, Haught,” Wynonna says at breakfast. “Any reason why?”

Nicole shakes her head to come back from cloud nine; her fingertips are on fire from where she traces amorphous patterns over Waverly’s legs under the table. Waverly’s in a similar state, eyes alight and twitching every time she grazes over sensitive spots. “Just excited.”

“To get chased by zombies?”

“Sure,” Nicole replies; she’s not quite registering what Wynonna’s saying, but it doesn’t particularly matter.

“Redheads are wild,” Wynonna mutters as she realizes she’s not going to get a cognisant answer from Nicole and plunges back into her oatmeal.

She hardly even recognizes as Nedley calls out for Unit 4 to be at the gate in ten.

* * *

 The enormity of the doors has Nicole stopping for a moment to take them in, and so does the fact that they open on silent hinges. “Oiled,” Waverly whispers as she notices Nicole’s face. “Infecteds love noise; that’s why there’s nothing within a quarter mile of the gate, keeps everything quiet so they have no reason to want to hang out over here.”

Nicole glances down at the rifle slung at Waverly’s hip. “Aren’t guns pretty loud?”

“Yeah, so we only shoot them when necessary. Like, right behind you, about to attack you, life or death.”

“Why not knives then? Quiet and don’t need reloading.”

“If you’re close enough to an infected that you can use a knife, you’re already dead.” Waverly shrugs. “They’re fast and fight dirty. Guns put ‘em down and make sure they stay that way.”

Nedley knocks the back of Nicole’s head to quiet her down and shoots a warning glare at Waverly; she’s small but heaven help anyone on the wrong side of her gun. “You know the drill,” he says when he pulls the five of them in. Up close the bags on his eyes are darker, the wrinkles in his face heavier. It must be exhausting sending people out each day, she thinks, knowing they might not come back.

“Nicole,” he whispers after everyone else has slipped outside the gates, guns held at the ready. “I need you to take the lead on this if you can. You survived out there for seven months on your own, you can keep these kids alive.” There’s something dark in his eyes; he’s desperate in a fatherly sort of way.

“ _Haughtshit_ ,” she can hear hissed from somewhere outside the gate. Wynonna’s teeth click. “Get the fuck out here.”

Nedley nods his approval and gives her a pat on the back before ushering her out.

She’s not afraid. This section of wood outside the gates is unfamiliar, sure, but her instinctive sense hasn’t died; her mind shifts to autopilot and she immediately steps to the front. “What the hell are you doing?” Wynonna snarls.

“What I know how to,” Nicole replies, and that’s enough of an answer for Wynonna’s gun to lower and her head to tilt inquisitively as she regards Nicole. The gates slide shut.

“You swear you know what you’re doing?”

Nicole nods and begins to steer them east; she’s got this.

“You keep my baby sister alive, Haught,” Wynonna says as her head nods for Nicole to take the lead. “Doc and Dolls can be collateral damage.”

Dolls rolls his eyes and nudges Wynonna, who takes a second to sink back against him. “Learning to trust,” he murmurs into her ear. “That’s new.”

“Fuck off,” Wynonna hisses and shoves the butt of her gun backwards into his stomach playfully. “Haught, you need a map?” Nicole holds out her hand and wiggles her fingers, pretending not to notice how Waverly’s eyes are glued to them. “Only going a few miles out, think you can get us there by yourself?”

“I’d say it’s an all hands on deck sort of thing, but I’ll do my best.” She unfurls the map as quietly as possible and scans it over for a moment before refolding it with all the grace of a survivor and tucks it into her back pocket. “Go left. 10 o’clock for about a mile.”

She immediately moves closer to Waverly, urging her with her elbow to pick up her gun a bit. “It’s heavy,” Waverly whispers.

Nicole nods and holds out her hands in a silent offer to carry it. After a moment of decision, Waverly relents and hands it over.

All of Nicole’s senses are on high alert and she leans back into them; they can tell the difference between a bird building nest or an infected stumbling over pines; they can tell her which direction will get her killed.

She steps a bit closer to Waverly and rests her finger over the trigger, just in case.

“You recognize any of this, Haught?” Wynonna whispers from a few feet behind her.

She shrugs. “You’d be amazed how hard it is to retain useless information when you’re trying to survive, Wynonna,” she replies. “Except…” Her eyes flick over to a tree, gnarled at the base and pines dying, unfurling branches reaching out like twisted fingers desperate for flesh.

Nicole’s blood runs cold.

“Haught?” She hears vaguely, and then a softer, “Nicole,” from Waverly, but her eyes can’t move, and neither can her feet.

“I’ve been here before,” she whispers. The tree sways, those fingers reaching for her. She steps back. “This is…I saw him here.”

The sound of a gun cocking is almost loud enough to snap her back from her reprieve, almost loud enough to make her notice that Doc and Dolls have raised their own, circling like hyenas surrounding their prey. Eyes flick across the horizon in search of disturbances.

“Is there something here?” Wynonna whispers. Her fingers rests against the trigger, ready. “Do we need to leave?”

“No,” Nicole says. She lets her eyes glaze over as a memory washes against the back of her irises.

_A tree branch rips from its base, dead and weathered, as snarls and the snapping of teeth cloud her head._

“Nicole, come back to me,” Waverly says. Her hands ruffle through her bag in search of water.

_“Fuck off!” Nicole cries, wielding it like a javelin, as if that will do anything to deter the bloody mouth and twitching nose that circles her._

“Haught,” Wynonna says. Her shoulder shakes and it throws her harder into the vision.

_It snarls and lunges at the same time she throws the branch, impaling it through the chest. A bloody hand snakes out and tears down her arm, ripping through a shred of her sleeve. The pain is searing, burning in her arm as she staggers back, and then it’s gone and her back hits the trunk of the tree, feet tripping over the gnarled base._

“Jesus, jesus,” Waverly whimpers as shaking handles fumble with the cap of the water bottle.

_The creature makes a desperate attempt to swat at her and falls back, hitting the ground with a dull thud. The branch snaps as it recoils against the ground and the pressure blows its ribcage out until all that remains are the legs and head of the creature and a bloody mess of a torso mated with a dead tree branch._

Cool fingers scrape against her chin as Waverly’s hands cup her face and press the mouth of a water bottle to her lips. “Drink,” Waverly whispers. So she does, until the water bottle is empty. “We’re here, come back.”

“I’m here, I’m here.” Nicole shakes her head. “I killed—I killed my first one here. My…my only one, actually. Right under that tree.”

Wynonna eyes her suspiciously as she leans back against Dolls, one arm protectively wrapped around her and the other holding his gun out wide. “The body is gone,” she says. Her eyes lower.

“I imagine some other infecteds got hungry,” Nicole replies. “They won’t attack each other when they’re alive, but once they’re dead, they don’t know the difference.”

Her stomach churns at the thought.

* * *

 “Doc and Dolls go in first. They’ve got the big guns.”

“Waverly does too.” Nicole’s chin juts out to where to the shotgun sits over her shoulder held on by a fading black strap. Waverly had insisted on taking it back after her little escapade.

Wynonna socks Nicole in the shoulder. “Get real. I’m not sending my baby sister in first. Besides, the boys are good at what they do.”

Doc winks and disappears inside, then reappears a moment later, grinning ear to ear. “I do believe you are going to thoroughly enjoy what we have stumbled upon,” he says, then vanishes back through the doors.

It’s an old grocery store by the looks of it, covered in decaying vines. Shattered windows litter the sides of the store and the doors have been blown out. But no bodies means no infecteds, and that’s good enough. Wynonna ushers Waverly and Nicole through before turning and swinging her gun wide. “Haught,” she calls quietly. “Use your spidey senses to let us know if anything is nearby.” Her eyes trail over to the case of whiskey, unopened, that adorns one of the last remaining shelves. “Oh, bingo,” she whispers.

 _Necessities_ , Nicole thinks as she shoves some bottles of shampoo into her backpack and throws a wink at Waverly when she finds a bottle of lube. Waverly’s face reddens and she turns away. She can’t hide her smile fast enough that Nicole doesn’t notice.

A glance around the corner reveals the boys in a similar state of euphoria; Dolls is inhaling a packet of peanut m’n’ms and Doc’s sharing the whiskey bottle with Wynonna. Stuffed backpacks litter the floor.

The air around Nicole goes cold.

“Guys,” she says. Her joints crack as she stands; the sound is louder than gunshots. Her pulse jumps as she glances around the aisle stands towards Wynonna; they’re too tall to look over. “I think it’s time to go.”

“What? We just got here. Look, whiskey!”

“Quiet down,” Nicole warns. Her ears are perked, listening for anything she can find in the silence. Waverly’s stopped and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“Did you hear something?”

“No, but—”

“Then we’re _fine_ ,” Wynonna says. The whiskey in her hand sways slightly. “You got us here no problem and I’ve got a big shiny gun.”

Fingers twine through her own and she glances over at Waverly who gives her a supportive smile. “I think I saw some first aid stuff an aisle back; let’s go look and then we’ll get out of here, okay?” Her hands squeeze. Nicole relents.

“Fine, one last thing. And then we’re going back.” She locks eyes with Waverly and leads her around a corner.

That’s when she notices the infected.

She shouts, “Fuck!” concurrent to Waverly screaming, and then her arm is practically yanked out of her socket as Waverly falls back. There’s a crash and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground, and Waverly’s body goes still against the floor, a heavy gash in her forehead.

The infected looks terrible; one of its shoulders is clearly broken and dangling from the socket. Bloodshot eyes flick between Waverly and Nicole as a mouth with only a few rotten remaining teeth click.

Nicole steps in front of Waverly and looks for any sort of weapon—the gun strapped around Waverly’s back won’t be any use, not if it can attack her before she can unwind it from her shoulders.

Only it doesn’t attack. It click its teeth more, agitated, and grunts a few times. Twitching eyes try to focus on Nicole as the grunting grows louder; it’s clearly confused and getting angry because of it.

It’s a last second sort of thought process, but she throws her hands up to protect her face as it screeches and lunges, waits to feel what little teeth it has left sink into her hand.

Instead, there’s a flash of red, a _plink_ , and then zombie brains splatter the aisle as the head explodes. The decapitated body wobbles for a moment and hits the ground with a _thunk_ similar to Waverly’s.

The grin on Wynonna’s face borders demonic as she whirls the fire extinguisher around like a baseball bat, now covered in brown brains of what used to be an infected’s head. “Home run, motherfuckers,” she says. “Time to go.”

* * *

 “I must insist you let me carry her,” Doc offers for what has to be the third time. He holds his hands out and wiggles his fingers, as if that’ll convince her as opposed to the other copious times both he and Dolls have tried to offer.

“I’ve got it,” Nicole hisses. Her ears are pricked as she carries Waverly bridal style in her arms. “Now shut up before they hear us.”

Doc’s mustache twitches. He relents.

Waverly curls against her chest and groans slightly; the gash on her head has sealed and stopped bleeding but still look disgusting. Blood coats the side of her face and blankets her left eye. Limp arms hang around the side of her shoulders.

“Haught,” Wynonna murmurs as she breaks even with Nicole’s gait. “Let me take care of her. I’ll carry her. You need a break.”

Nicole shakes her head, fingers clenching tighter around Waverly’s frame. “Just go open the gate.”

Wynonna shoots Nicole a last look before nodding and jogging ahead to where the looming gates stand—it’s not a particular wonder why Nicole never found them; she’d been at least a few miles away when the zombie attack had occurred. The tree with the gnarled fingers winds its way through her memory, the branch that threw out a zombie’s chest; she’d gotten sick afterwards and on a delirious, half-conscious stumble through the woods a month later, had happened upon an old medical facility, desperate for anything to take to lower her fever or stop the puking. She could remember dragging herself through the doors, tearing her skin on broken glass, and forcing what little energy she had left to make it into a medication aisle.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a hospital to the face of an angel hovering above her.

The angel, whose face is painted red with her own blood, dangling limp in Nicole’s arms. Her fault. Nicole’s fingers tighten against her side and hoist her further up—her biceps burns with the exertion but they’re viced; the only way she’s putting Waverly down is once they’re in the infirmary and she’s sure they’re safe.

The doors glide open on silent hinges and Nicole makes a beeline for the infirmary after shrugging her backpack off. Jeremy’s eyes go wide when she makes her way over. “You better take good care of her,” she says as she tucks Waverly into an empty bed.

“This isn’t really my area of expertise,” he replies. His voice wobbles. “Is she—is she okay?”

Nicole lets out a breath she hadn’t realize she’d been holding and nods. “She will be. Probably got a concussion, will maybe need a stitch or two, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“We’ll take care of her,” she hears from behind her and she instinctively steps closer to Waverly before turning. The owner of the voice is older, a graying beard patched over dark skin. Cold brown eyes flick between Nicole, Waverly, and Jeremy, before settling back. “I don’t believe I’ve formally introduced myself. Richard Moody.”

He holds out his hand to shake. His fingers squeeze just a little too tight when Nicole takes it.

“Get some rest. No blood work today, excellent work out there. You can come visit her in the morning, but let’s let her get some sleep for a while. I’ll have someone take a look at that gash in her forehead, get her cleaned up.” His eyes drill holes into her skull. “Glad to have you on our side, Nicole.”

The way he says it doesn’t sit right in her stomach.

* * *

 She can’t shake the feeling in her stomach that something is wrong—her mind flicks back to Waverly, to Moody, to the cold, heartless look in his eyes. To the pressure in her fingers when they shook hands. The coldness that reeked from his voice.

Further, she needs to talk to Waverly. The tree with the gnarled fingers that reach for her when she sleeps, how her blood ran cold at the store when the infected refused to attack. How the thought of Richard Moody doesn’t sit right in her stomach.

Her jumpsuits aren’t that dark but they’ll have to do as she pokes her head out of her door and glances down the hallway to see if there are any guards coming.

Fuck curfew.

She’s visiting Waverly, tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I message one of my friends on tumblr about this fic (I love u sharky) because they try to slide spoilers from me and so I pose this question to those of you who are sure it's nicole killing these kids: Nedley's been pretty adamant about increased security to enforce curfew. how could a bloodthirsty Nicole who can barely stand upright on her own two feet manage to get around the compound without getting noticed by the guards, hmm?
> 
> comments and kudos make the happiest and therefore make me wanna give u guys more content so it's a win-win, just sayin


	7. A Riot in the Streets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole learns something new about herself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have almost this whole thing written so I might as well update twice a week anyway

Okay, Nicole concludes as she ducks behind a wall to avoid a guard. There’s no way she’s the one killing these kids. Managing to get outside without being spotted is hard enough; a bloodthirsty Nicole who’s only intent would be to sink her teeth into flesh would be downright impossible to miss.

So at least there’s that.

Her back slams against the wall as another guard appears around a corner and her breath leaves her lungs in a heave. He glances around the hallway, bored, before moving on. She lets out a sigh and sprints across the hallway to where she can mold herself behind another corner and keep going.

It’s another ten minutes before she’s made it outside, but instead of deterring her, it’s only made her more intent to make it to Waverly. She’s neck deep at this point; swimming back to shore would be fruitless.

There’s a surprising lack of guards outside and crossing through the gardens to the infirmary is easier than anticipated. She slips through the doors and jogs down the hallway to the infirmary, where the other set of doors are already wide open. Her eyes immediately go to where she’d dropped Waverly off that night.

Waverly’s there, but so are five others, clad in lab coats, surrounding her cot. Moody stands off to the side, hands folded behind his back as he tries to reason with the scientists.

She throws herself behind an empty bed before anyone notices and pokes her head over the top. The six are whispering but it’s quiet enough that she can make out what they’re saying.

“—literally _anyone_ else,” one says.

“Levi is asleep right there!” Someone else whispers as their hands gesture to a sleeping boy in the cot across the room. Moody shakes his head and opens his mouth to say something, but someone else cuts him off and Nicole’s blood runs cold as the scientist speaks.

“There’ll be a god damn riot if Waverly Earp turns up dead.”

“Lucado,” Moody says. His voice has gone cold. “I do not have time to worry about this when the fate of humanity is resting on my shoulders. Sacrificing one silly little girl for the greater good has to be done. She is the most valuable asset we have; she’s the closest to the Nightwalker; she has to be taken. Especially with how she manages to keep it at bay with her presence.”

Nicole isn’t sure she’s hearing him right or if he’s spewing utter nonsense, but it doesn’t matter. Blood pounds in her ears as she watches the woman, Lucado, sink in defeat as she glances back over Waverly and nods. “So be it. Load her up.”

The rest of the scientists fumble around in agreement for a moment before spacing themselves around the cot and lifting; Waverly rustles a bit and Nicole wants to scream for her to wake up, but then she rolls over and goes back to sleep, and Nicole’s stomach drops out beneath her.

 _Wynonna_ , is her first thought. _Get Wynonna_. Her feet don’t listen. She’s already following through the doors on the opposite end of the infirmary before she’s even registered what she’s doing.

She manages to slide through the narrowing crack in the door as it closes and ducks behind a wall as the footsteps fade out. It’s her fatal flaw, not looking around the corner before she goes. Either her mind is running faster than her feet or her feet are running faster than her mind but she dives around the corner headfirst as soon as she hears the footsteps stop.

And runs directly into Richard Moody.

* * *

“Good evening, Ms. Haught,” he says evenly. She yelps in surprise. Waverly, a few paces down the hallway, rustles a bit on the cot where the scientist hold her in place. Her eyes are scrunched tight as she sleeps. His fingers wrap around her wrist and he gives her a smile full of knives. “Why don’t you and I have a chat?”

“Don’t take Waverly,” she begs. Her wrist makes no motion to tear from his grip, not when Waverly’s life could be at stake. “Please. You can have me instead, but let her go.”

“We can’t take you,” Moody replies. “We need you.”

“I swear to god.” She knows her voice is trembling but she can’t help it. “I won’t tell a single soul about tonight, I swear, but you have to let her go.”

Moody stares her down for a moment before relenting. “You won’t tell anyone about this regardless, Ms. Haught.” His eyes rolls as he turns towards the scientists. “Go on and bring the Earp girl back and let her sleep.”

Nicole wants to reach out and touch Waverly’s hand, comfort her, as the cot passes by back to the infirmary. Instead she steels her gaze over and turns back to Moody. “Let’s visit my office.”

“Fuck you,” she spits. But her need to know wins over and she lets herself be guided into a door off to the right.

“I’m going to have a chat with Lucado for a moment,” he says. “Don’t break anything.” Then the door slams shut.

She presses her ear up to it instantly. Muffled voices seep in after a moment of adjusting to find the thinnest section of the wood.

“This is ludicrous,” she hears Lucado hiss. “Telling her would be suicide.”

“Lucado—” Moody starts.

“No, Moody. You absolutely cannot tell her. Do you know what she could do with that sort of knowledge? Not only could she fuck us over, she could fuck the fate of humanity over and I am not going to stand here and let you make what could be the worst decision of your career.”

“Lucado, let me ask you something. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them’?”

“Yes.”

Moody’s voice lowers. “We need to hurt them.”

* * *

Nicole barely has time to throw herself back from the door as it swings open and Moody storms in. “Sit down,” he says as he circles the desk in the room and drops himself into the chair on the other side. “We have a bit to discuss.”

“You’ve been kidnapping kids,” Nicole snarls. “You took Malcolm and John and you were going to take Waverly. You’ve been killing them.” It’s somewhere between a fact and a shot in the dark but it’s _something_ , and that’s all Nicole needs for leverage.

“We have,” Moody agrees, and his confession takes her back. She’d expected at least some form of a rebuttal from him, not an outright dismissal. “That’s not what we’re here to talk about, though.”

“You’re right. What we _are_ here to talk about is how if you lay a single fucking finger on Waverly Earp or any one of my friends, I’m going to tell everyone what you’ve been doing.”

She wants to burn him, needs him to know that she isn’t playing around, but his composure makes her uneasy. He makes no faces, makes no attempt to plead with her to keep her mouth shut. Instead he stares her down with cold, beady eyes.

“Things changed around here when those Earp girls dragged you behind the wall, Haught.” He regards her with a sort of chilled curiosity, as though she’s a science experiment he can view through the looking glass. She shifts uncomfortably. “Have you always wondered why you survived so long without the wall?”

“I’m a good fighter,” Nicole hisses, but she can feel the color drain from her face as everything clicks into place. The tree with gnarled fingers begins to grope at her thoughts.

“Everyone we’ve sent out for longer than a day hasn’t survived and they had help. So how did one girl manage to last seven months alone without a single bite? We couldn’t figure it out on our own, and it took hours, days, of specializing your DNA, recombination, anything we could, until one day it hit us. The peculiarity was so obvious that we had dismissed it. You survived, Nicole, because they don’t attack their own kind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated beyond compare


	8. Nightwalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a chapter of answers
> 
> also I looked it up and it's pronounced "oh-chi-dare-ae"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to ask questions if there's something you don't understand! but again, if there are spoilers I'm clearly not gonna be able to answer those. but clarification questions or things you're confused on I'm always happy to.

“You’re—you’re shitting me, right?” Inherently Nicole knows he’s right and the truth of the statement lights the gnarled fingers on fire as they reach for her; but denying it will delay the burn, at least for now. Her hands make wild swoops across her body. “Clearly I’m not a fucking zombie.”

“That’s a harsh term. I’m sure Nedley has informed you that we consider them to be infecteds? Zombie implies creatures that are dead, beyond the veil. Infected implies that they can be cured. It’s all in the monikerisms.”

“ _I’m not a fucking infected_ ,” Nicole snarls. She debates standing, getting into close to his face with her teeth bared, but his composure stops her before she can. Hands folded in front of him, not a crease in his suit. Regal, if it didn’t hold a murderer within it.

“Right now, you’re correct. But what about when you sleep?”

The floor drops out from underneath Nicole. Moody seems more of less disaffected as he smooths down his tie and takes a moment to examine his hands with disinterest; perhaps he can’t see the blood of Malcolm Ramaker and John Nogier that ooze from them.

His voice sounds bored as he clears his throat and carries on. “You, Ms. Haught, are what my team and I have elected to call a Nightwalker. You carry the traits of an infected but don’t express them—not until you’re asleep. They remain dormant only until you are.

“If I had to guess, I would say you had an experience behind the wall with an infected not dissimilar to an attack without a salivatory contact; as in, it made contact with you but didn’t bite you. A scratch, perhaps. They can sense their own kind, which is why from there it wouldn’t attack you. Even when you’re awake, they know. So they stayed away from you, and you survived.”

Nicole’s hands have gone numb from how hard she clenches them in her lap and her jaw aches.

“You were a medical miracle when you were first brought behind the wall,” he continues. “Somehow, despite living on your own for seven months, you said?—you were in peak condition. Your vitals were steady, you weren’t starving. In fact, you look like all that had happened was you’d taken a tumble on a hike. It was a bit peculiar, wouldn’t you agree?”

Rational ideas try to argue with her about everything. Surely she would’ve noticed the blood on her hands, the taste in her mouth. But there had been blood on her hands from day one, any new addition would’ve blended in. And the cleanest thing in her mouth since the infection had been pool water from a neighbor’s backyard—of course the taste would’ve gone unrecognized.

Even the dreams of traipsing through the woods, half dazed, come back to her. They’d been nothing, an amalgamation of dreams and reality in a delusional spurt. She’d been focused on surviving first and foremost, and psychoanalyzing odd dreams was on the bottom of the list when it came to activities to keep her alive, much less trying to remember them the next morning.

And, well. She hadn’t starved to death because she’d lived off the flesh of those who had.

“Since you came behind the wall, Ms. Haught, it’s proof that people can live with this disease. And if people can live with the disease, it can be cured. So we’ve been having Mr. Chetri take your blood and vitals every day to see if we can find the cure.”

“Jeremy knows what you’ve been doing?”

“Mr. Chetri knows that your DNA is different and that is all. The only people who know about the…experimentation on behalf of a few select individuals are those that you saw surrounding the cot earlier. Did you see Mr. Chetri among them?”

Nicole squints her eyes and leans back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest.

“We’ve been trying to work backwards with your DNA. Injecting it into kids to infect them and using the results to create the antivenom. We can’t exactly attest to why it hasn’t been working, but what we know through both Mr. Ramaker and Mr. Nogier as test subjects is that artificial infection kills them before we’ve had a chance to create an antivenom. So we’ve had to dispose of both of the bodies in the early hours of the morning.”

“Why not cover it up, then? Say a kid went missing. Why dump the bodies out to be found if you know it will raise suspicion?”

Moody folds his arms as his eyes stare into Nicole’s. Dreadful. “You’re a smart girl, Nicole. You think kids can just go missing here without it raising signs? No one can leave the compound alone and everyone here needs to know what happened. We were going to frame it on animals; there are a few lurking around that aren't as tame as they should be. But then you stuck your nose where it didn’t belong and, well, we can’t just let that kind of opportunity go to waste, can we?”

It’s takes a second for her to understand when she’s saying, and she almost doubles over when she does. Her head spins, there’s blood in her mouth and seeping from underneath her fingernails as she forces herself to sit up straight, throw a nonchalant look over her face and stare him dead in the eye.

She didn’t kill Malcolm nor did she kill John.

But she’d been eating their dead bodies.

“Did you think you were able to sneak around the grounds completely unnoticed when we have guards patrolling all around? At first, sure, you were lucky. But then we realized what had just stumbled into our laps, so we told the guards to leave if they found you. After Mr. Ramaker died, we used it as an excuse to enforce curfew to make sure no one saw what you had become. What you are. You played right into our game, Nicole Haught. Checkmate.”

Nicole’s jaw feels rusty as she tries to force it to work. Her voice comes out as a croak. “Why are you telling me this? You could’ve fed me any bullshit lie you wanted to keep your ass in the clear.”

He leans forward, jacket crinkling across his chest as he does so. “Because you need to know the circumstances in order to understand the consequences. Should you tell anyone what you know, we’ll lead Purgatory to believe it was you who took it upon yourself to end Mr. Nogier and Mr. Ramaker’s lives. As soon as any form of footage is released of what you do when your body succumbs to your infection, no one would believe it wasn’t you. You’d be outside the wall and on your own again before you even turned human in the morning, and that is a promise.”

“Fuck you,” Nicole spits.

“We’ll also kill Waverly Earp,” he adds nonchalantly, as if discussing the latest movie he’d seen with an apparent disinterest.  “She’d make an excellent test subject.”

The first part would’ve been horrid but bearable; the second is interminable. An ultimatum she cannot allow herself to face. So she snarls and shakes her head violently. “You created this,” she hisses. “The infection. You did this.”

“You’re a smart girl, Ms. Haught.” Moody tilts his head as he regards her with an unnamed curiosity. “It was under my supervision that Black Badge was tasked with creating a new military weapon. A soldier without limitations. A superhuman, if you will. But the approach got out of hand when an unnamed individual managed to escape after accidentally creating the infection seen today and, well.” He claps his hands together and leans back in his chair. “It spread like wildfire over a dead forest as soon as a single one of our experiments made it beyond the walls of the laboratory. We were as prepared as we could be with such short notice; we had some semblance of a wall built for an emergency and began pulling people behind it as soon as the plague struck worldwide. It was a sad excuse for protection at first; consisted mostly of old sheets of metal and anything we could salvage from nearby building, but seven months is a long time to create something, the refine something until it’s unstoppable.” His eyes gleam. “I’m sure you’re quite aware.”

She debates lunging at him over the desk.

“And now here we are. Purgatory. Stuck between heaven and hell with nowhere to go but down. I’m sure you should be able to find your way back to your dorm safely? You should go get some rest. Now that we are both aware of the knowledge that you can’t be hurt behind the wall, your team is going to be running on a more frequent basis. Supplies are dwindling faster than we can replenish them, and there will be little we can do once we’re out besides start sending the weaker links outside the wall.”

“And you won’t touch Waverly Earp? You fucking swear it?”

“So as long as you keep your mouth shut, I should see no problem with that. Run along now.”

She stands so fast that the chair underneath her falls backwards and cracks against the cool stone of the floor. “You won’t get away with this, you know.”

“Ms. Haught.” If he smiled, she’s sure it would’ve been saccharine. Instead his eyes bore into her without warmth, an empty vat of coldness that leaves the bottom of her stomach writhing. “We already have.”

* * *

The moonlight fades from white to grainy as she paces in her room, too scared to sleep and too tired to think. Feet trace the same pattern on the floor for what has to be the millionth time until yellow, watery sun kisses her shoes. It’s a wake up call.

The bags under her eyes are heavy and prominent, so she splashes cold water over her face and pretends that it fixes them.

* * *

The infirmary sleeps when she pushes the door open. Waverly’s in the same spot she was last night, eyes shut tight as her hands wrap around her blankets and curl them into her to fend off the cool of the night.

Nicole aches to wrap her body around Waverly’s, to curl her arms over her chest and pull her in until she’s warm again. Her feet tread lightly across the floor until she’s standing over Waverly’s cot, wishing for nothing more than to tuck the strand of hair across her face behind her ear. “Hey,” she murmurs, quiet enough that it won’t wake her. “I’m—I’m really sorry, Waves. I can’t…I can’t stick around here. Around you. For much longer. I’d hurt you and—” She chokes up at the implication, forces herself to swallow down her sob. “I’m so sorry, Waverly Earp.”

Lips press to the underside of Waverly’s ear where her jaw meets it and then she’s out of the room faster than she was in it, smearing the tears that drip from her eyes across her cheeks in a desperate attempt to convince herself that she’s okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise there's more to the plot than Nicole just finding out she's a zombie hence why there are 8 more chapters


	9. Rivaling Atlas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yesterday at work a man saw my name tag when I was checking him out and proceeded to sing "Julia, Julia, Juliaaaaaaa," to me for the whole two minute transaction

Waverly’s seat next to Nicole bleeds vacancy. Wynonna’s face is drawn into a semi-permanent snarl aimed directly at Nicole as she stabs her fork into the excuse for scrambled eggs on the table. Even Doc and Dolls are quiet, Doc’s mustache barricading his upper lip. Maybe it’s for the best.

The fork scrapes against the plate with an eerie shriek that makes Nicole’s insides curl and Wynonna flips her hair to lean towards her from across the table. “You look like shit, Haught. Not sleep well last night?”

Nicole’s tongue clicks against her teeth as her eyes roll. “Can I help you?”

“I don’t know.” Wynonna curls her lower lip over her teeth and leans back as she regards Nicole with distaste. “But I don’t trust you, Haught. I wanted to, sure, but then you had to go and put my baby sister in danger.”

“Oh yeah?” Nicole knows she’s playing into Wynonna’s trap, exactly what she wants, as her fork hits the table with a clatter and she leans forward, baring her teeth ever so subtly. But she’s tired of getting tossed around; by Moody, by Wynonna. It’s time to fight back. “And how’s that, Wynonna?”

Wynonna’s head cocks to the side and her eyes squinting. “You get us outside, move us around, seamlessly. No problem. So I don’t believe for a single fucking second that you didn’t know the infected was there all along. I’ve seen the way you look at Waverly, you know. I know what you’re trying to do. Trying to play the hero so she’ll fall right into your desperate little arms.”

“I _did_ warn you,” Nicole snarls. “But your head was too far up your own ass to pay attention.”

“Look.” Wynonna’s hands come down hard on the table. “Something is wrong with you, Haught. As soon as you showed up, people started disappearing. _Our_ people. And I have a feeling you know why.”

Dolls’s arm wraps around Wynonna’s shoulders and pulls her against him. “Earp, come on,” he laughs nervously. “Be reasonable. You can’t honestly think she’s going around killing kids, can you? You have to hear how ridiculous that sounds.”

“Of course I’m not—are you fucking serious, Wynonna?” Nicole can tell her voice is rising, but so is her blood pressure, and there’s little escape from that. Then, before she’s able to stop herself the words are pouring from her mouth. “Waverly’s her own person. You can’t protect her forever, you know.”

The whole table shakes as Wynonna’s fist slams into it and she whisks out of the dining hall, deaf to Nicole’s calls.

“Ms. Haught,” Doc warns, arms wrapping around her stomach as she moves to chase after her. “You do not tell an Earp in which battles they should choose to partake.”

* * *

If Jeremy gets in trouble, she’ll take it up directly with Moody herself, but blood work isn’t happening today. Not when she now holds the knowledge that her agreeing to it has cost two runner their lives.

Her feet carry her to the infirmary before she’s fully aware of what she’s doing or where she’s going. The door glides open on silent hinges as she pushes through it and freezes when she hear sobs coming from Waverly’s cot.

Only it’s not Waverly crying. In fact, she’s still knocked out on the bed. It’s Wynonna, curled over her with one of her hands clenched between her own, shoulders shaking as she attempts to rival Atlas with the weight she must carry. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry, babygirl. This wasn’t supposed to happen—none of this _shit._ You were supposed to grow up and have a wife, start a family, everything that Momma and Daddy fucked up for you.”

Nicole’s heart crushes itself in her chest. She knows she should back out and give Wynonna her privacy but she can’t force herself to move as sobs continue to wrack her frame, growing skinnier by the day.

“I’m trying, babygirl. I swear. I tried for Daddy and I tried for Momma and I tried for Willa, and I failed. I’m not going to fail you. You’re my favorite person in the whole wide world, babygirl. You’re stuck with me.”

The food on the bedside table to the cot is half-eaten which sends a warmth through Nicole’s chest. She’s must’ve woken up and managed to eat something before falling back asleep.

With a start, Nicole comes to the realization that she doesn’t hate Wynonna. She doesn’t even dislike Wynonna. She _pities_ her. This weight that she carries on her shoulders must be suffocating, must crush her lungs at every opportunity. Waverly could have died yesterday because Wynonna hadn’t listened, and she knows that. She needs someone to blame before that weight gets so heavy it swallows her whole.

Her feet carry her backwards at the realization; maybe they’re the first to realize that Wynonna deserves to be alone with her sister for a bit. Nicole makes no effort to fight them.

* * *

“Earp!” Dolls yells. He jogs down the hallway to try to keep up as she shakes her head and storms past him. “Earp, hey! You can’t ignore me forever!”

“I sure as hell can try,” Wynonna snarls as she picks up her pace. A combat boot kicks the door to the infirmary open and a cold wind bites at her face as she steps outside. “I’m really not a big fan of eavesdroppers, Dolls. Thought you and your big muscles should know that by now.”

Dolls shakes his head in frustration as he levels pace with her and puts his hands on her shoulders to force her to face him. “For the last time, Earp. I was checking in on you. I don’t know what you said to Waverly and I don’t care. What I do care about is that she’s safe.”

Wynonna’s eyebrows lower into a glare. “You weren’t all that helpful back at the foodhouse, shithead. What happened to being on each other’s side, huh?”

“Wynonna.” Dolls lets his voice soften. “I’m on your side; you know I am. But you’re being ridiculous. Nicole saved your sister’s life. Without her Waverly would—she’d…” His hand scratches the back of his head in search of answers that don’t border R-rated.

“I don’t trust her.” Wynonna throws her nose in the air and makes a point not to look Dolls in the eyes.

“You do,” Dolls counters. “I know you do. No one is going to think you’re any less of a hardass for it, though. No one is going to think you care any less about Waverly because you’re not afraid to trust someone.”

He expects a sort of rebuttal, for Wynonna to tear herself free and storm away, but instead she curls into him and her fingers dig tight into the back of his jumpsuit. “Xavier Dolls, you are the most bull-headed man I have ever met.”

“Bite me,” he murmurs as his hands wrap around her shoulders to pull her in tighter. He presses a kiss to the top of her head.

* * *

Nicole gets a dangerous feeling when she makes it back to her room, something she tries to actively fight but knows its useless—fatigue. It envelopes her limbs, her eyes, and her bed looks oh-so-inviting when she manages to stumble through the door. In an effort to stay awake she begins to pace, trains her eyes to a certain spot on the ceiling and forces it to ground her.

Before she’s fully aware of it, she’s stumbled to a chair by the end of her bed and collapsed into it. Eyelids sink lower and lower until her sight is restrained and she can feel herself slipping off when there’s a sharp rap at the door. Her whole body jolts.

“Waverly,” she breathes when she pulls the door open. She looks exhausted, weary, and the cut on her forehead has taken on an awful shade of pink in the middle with a smattering of purples and greens around it. But she looks _alive_. Nicole could damn near cry at the sight of her.

“You look exhausted,” Waverly whispers. Her hands trail up and brush against Nicole’s jaw, fingers cool.

“What every girl wants to hear,” Nicole replies. “But yeah, I am.” She wants to let Waverly in, to pull her down on top of her and smother her with love until the cut on her forehead is nothing but a beautiful scar she can press her lips to until Waverly forgets to hate it. She wants to hold her, tell her everything and reassure her that they’ll make it out. That it will be okay.

That’s exactly why she can’t.

“How are you feeling? You…you hit your head pretty hard back in the store.”

Waverly’s hand traces up to her cut before dropping back down and twining her fingers. “I’m okay, just a bit shaken. No concussion or stitches, I just need to take it pretty easy for the next few days but I’ll be fine. I’m lucky I had someone so brave to rescue me. Wynonna told me you carried me all the way back. Wouldn’t let anyone else and held me until we got to the infirmary.”

Nicole ducks her head and blushes. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Well.” Waverly’s voice drops an octave. “You did an excellent job.” She goes up on her toes and Nicole knows what’s coming next, wants to sink into it and press their lips together, drag Waverly back into her room and whispers secrets against her until she’s forgotten all about the horrors behind the wall.

Only she doesn’t; she turns her head and warm lips press against her cheek. “Waverly,” she whispers. Her hands wrap around her arms in what she hopes to be a comforting but firm manner. “What we did the other night…it was a mistake. It was an accident and it can’t happen again.”

Her heart shrieks as her ribcage holds it hostage— _it’s not true!_ She wants to cry. It’s the exact opposite, truly; but she can’t risk hurting Waverly, especially not now.

Just because she loves her doesn’t mean she won’t hurt her.

“I don’t…” Waverly sinks back to her feet, eyes wide in surprise. “I don’t understand.”

Nicole forces herself to stand straighter and harden her eyes. “I’m sorry, Waverly.”

“You’re not even going to offer me an explanation?”

“I don’t think you need one.”

Waverly breathes in through her nose, nodding, and adopts a pensive look. “Nicole Haught,” she says after a moment, voice so low Nicole has to strain to hear it. “You are the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”

Then she storms away and takes the better half of Nicole Haught with her.

* * *

Her eyelids grow heavier by the second, limbs sluggish and encased with the cement of her own undoing. She tries push ups, sit ups, anything that will keep her awake, but it’s no use. She hasn’t even made it to the bed by the time her body collapses against the cool stone of the floor.

She starts to dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> never work in retail


	10. Blood of Another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress how helpful kudos and comments are

It takes a moment to realize where Nicole is when she wakes up in the morning, eyes flicking over the wooden tiles of the ceiling. Her whole body aches and there’s a hard surface pressing against her back. Stone. She blinks, slowly, runs her tongue over her teeth. Her stomach rolls.

She’s in the bathroom before she’s fully processed what she’s doing. Scalding water pours over her hands as she scrubs furiously, revels in the burn and the sting until her hands contain no trace of anyone’s blood but her own. Her mouth and face are next; her tongue screams with pain when she sips the water into her mouth like she’s swallowed a gulp of tea not yet cooled down enough. She’ll feel it for a few days.

 _Good_.

A new jumpsuit drapes over her as she changes—she’s getting skinnier and skinnier and it must be the stress, she knows, because she’s well aware, too aware, of the fact that she’s been eating plenty. Moody made damn sure of that.

The expected knock never comes to her door; instead it takes residence in her skull, pounding, as she remembers the fight with Waverly the night before, her storming off in misery and taking Nicole’s heart with her.

It’s fair. What she deserves.

The trek to the dining hall drags on for hours longer than usual. The table with her group of runners are there, but one look from Waverly and she takes a table in the back, alone.

“Mornin’,” Nedley gruffs from the front of the room. The bags under his eyes are so dark Nicole can see them from the back of the room. He looks more than tired; completely defeated. “Levi Goutsis,” is all he says. His eyes track around the room. “Turned up dead this morning, mauled to death. I believe that is all I need to say.”

His whole body seems to collapse as he sits, but Nicole isn’t listening. Instinct carries her to the closest bathroom and she slams through one of the doors into the stalls, dropping to her knees and retching up blood that isn’t her own. She vomits until she can’t feel her tongue anymore, forces herself to ignore why there’s so much of it in her stomach. Sobs against the seat of the toilet.

Once this whole thing is over, she’s going to rip Moody’s face off with her bare hands.

* * *

 Most running groups have dispersed and disappeared when she finds it in her to crawl back to the dining hall. Dolls waves her over, arms wrapped protectively around Wynonna’s shoulders. As much as it does, she won’t stop shooting her glares that scream murder and Waverly refuses to meet her eyes. “Hey, Haught.” Wynonna smiles. “Where you been, huh?”

“Bathroom,” Nicole replies.

“Hmm. Well, in your disappearance Nedley graciously gave us the day off. No training. Do you know why that is, Haughtshit?”

“Lay off, Earp,” Dolls warns. Doc’s mustache quivers.

“Because.” A hand snakes out and jabs Nicole in the chest. “Of your little heroic stunt you pulled on our last run. They’ve decided we’re the most apt group so we’re running again tomorrow. Usually groups get at least a week in between, but you had to go and act the hero, didn’t you?”

“I saved your sister’s life. Odd way to say thank you, but I’ll take it.”

Wynonna’s eyebrows lower into a glower.

The doors to the hall slam open and Jeremy sprints in, face red and breath puffing out. “Nicole!” he says. Feet slide over tile as he stops in front of her. “Are you coming to blood work today?” Eyes flick between the five of them nervously and he prances from foot to foot.

“I—”

“ _Nicole_ ,” he says again, voice lowering. “Let me rephrase that. I’ll see you at bloodwork today.” Something in his voice sounds dangerous, sharp, so she nods her head.

“I’ll see you in bloodwork, Jeremy,” she replies. He sighs in relief and shakes her hand, throws a half-asses salute to Nedley, and sprints back out the far door, lab coat swirling behind him as he runs.

Nicole’s hand curls over the note he’s shoved into it.

_Bring running team to the lab at midnight tonight. Room 11. Emergency._

* * *

 “Alright, little nerd. You’d better have a damn good reason for making me drag my ass out of bed when I’ve got to be running through an infected forest tomorrow.” Pissed Wynonna isn’t an ideal Wynonna, but at least she’s there, so that’ll have to do.

“It is, trust me.” He spins a vial in between his fingers, the contents inside so dark that it almost hurts to look at. A liquid of sorts that seems to move of its own accord. He pushes to door to room 11 open and ushers everyone inside, glancing around one last time before closing it and flicking on the light. It’s similar to the other rooms Nicole’s been in, a single medical chair in the middle and various machines and supplies dotting the rest of the room.

“Well?” Wynonna surveys the room as her arm pulls Waverly in close to her. “Out with it. Why’d you bring us all here so urgently?”

“Ahh, well. Nicole, you should sit down.” He guides her down to the chair and it’s so familiar in the way he does it, respectful hands that help her position herself. “I have to tell you something. But what I say to you has to stay in here, between us. It cannot get out, or we’re all going to be in deep shit.” He pauses as he turns to face her, hands twitching as if debating wrapping his own around hers. “I’ve been your main scientist trying to look through all your DNA, see what made you so apt for living in the wilderness on your own. You know, how you survived and all that without help.”

Wynonna raises her eyebrows.

“And.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’m not sure how to say it without sounding callous but. Well. You’re…you’re infected, Nicole. You’re a zombie.”

If she hadn’t been seated, she’s sure the floor would’ve dropped out from under her. Instead her breath freezes in her chest and she finds herself nodding. “Okayyy,” she murmurs slowly. “Okay, okay. That’s. That’s a thing. That I am. Zombie.” She nods again and claps her hands against her thighs. “Is that all you brought me in to say?”

Jeremy offers her a weak smile.

Waverly’s breath hitches as she speaks. “You don’t…seem all that surprised, Nicole.”

“Are you surprised?”

Doc is the first to cut in. “I do believe that our handsome friend has more to say on the matter before we find ourselves lookin’ too far into it.”

Jeremy squeaks. “I do. I figured it wouldn’t shake the rest of you as much because, I mean. We’re living through a zombie apocalypse. Just about anything can happen. And it makes sense, how you managed to survive that long. They won’t attack their own kind.”

“She doesn’t look like a zombie,” Wynonna observes. Her eyebrows are lowered as she up-downs Nicole.

“Because she’s not right now,” Jeremy replies. The vial in his hands slips into his lab coat pocket as she begins pulling on latex gloves. “She carries the disease but doesn’t express it when she’s awake. It can only be activated when she’s asleep.”

“Every time I’m asleep?”

Jeremy blinks. “Uh. I don’t think so? There are a few permutations that lead me to believe it’ll only activate when it’s hungry or feels unsafe. I haven’t really looked into it too much, I’ve been…working on something else.”

“Which is…?”

“Well.” Jeremy reaches behind him and pulls out a mask of sorts that looks like it might be useful in a radioactive wasteland. “The reason I brought everyone here is the help hold you down.”

Several things happen at once, and all of them involve someone yelling. “Hold her down? Are we fucking killing her, Chetri?” Wynonna snaps.

“Jeremy, I must insist that if we are going to cut the parasite out of her, you must let me. I have the most nimble fingers,” Doc supplies.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Jeremy yells, hands up in surrender.

“I didn’t kill the kids,” Nicole shrieks. “It wasn’t me, I swear!”

That’s enough to make everyone freeze and turn to her. “We don’t—what? No, we don’t think you killed the kids. I need you guys to help me hold her down because I made an antidote and I’m not sure how long it’ll take before it starts working. We need to keep you down long enough to let it register. Just in case you start thrashing.”

The tension in the room becomes tangible as everyone sucks in a breath, waiting. “You can cure me?” Nicole whispers. Her finger tips have gone white from where she clenches the edge of the chair.

Jeremy lets out a long, weary breath. “To be completely honest, I don’t know. I have no idea if this antivenom is going to work, so I need to know you’re okay with going through with is before I do anything.” The shadows on his face lengthen, his eyes sink. “It could kill you, but I’m not sure how much that matters when part of you is already dead.”

Behind her eyes she can see blood in the toilet in front of her, blood that was in her stomach but not her own, flesh beneath her fingernails, hair in between her teeth. The slumped body of Malcolm Ramaker against the table. The bite marks on his body that she knows would fit perfectly to her mouth. The tree with gnarled fingers that reaches for her when she sleeps. “Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”

“What?” Waverly snaps, voice rising in fear. “Did you hear him, Nicole? You could die—there’s no way! There’s no way I’m letting you go through with this.”

“Waverly,” Wynonna whispers at the same time Nicole shoots her a sad, slow smile.

“Jeremy’s right, Waves. What does it matter if part of me is already dead?”

 _What if the other part of you dies, too?_ Waverly cries to her. Nicole doesn’t have an answer.

Jeremy takes another glance around the room, as if in search of controversy, then positions the mask over her face. “It's a mist of sorts, but it has to be inhaled,” he says. “Once it’s secured and I start the machine, just breathe in normally. Normally we’d strap you down but this isn’t one of those chairs and if you start to spasm you could fall off the bed and hurt yourself.” He nods to Doc and Dolls to grab the legs and he and Wynonna each take an arm.

Cools fingers runs against the base of Nicole’s skull as Waverly winds her hand through her hair. The other wraps around Nicole’s jaw and draws amorphous patterns against her cheek where the mask doesn’t cover.

“You ready?” Jeremy asks. Nicole nods. He glances around the room one more time, looking between each hard-set face, then twists a the vial into the mask and hits a button on the machine next to him.

A searing pain fills her lungs, then everything goes white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you all know this because you've all been excellent, but I'm not sure how many of you actually write fics and post them for the world to see. If you do, you'll know how scary it is.
> 
> I love sharing content with you guys, more than anything. My heart soars when I see kudos and I cannot TELL you how jazzed I get when I get an email from Ao3 telling me that someone left a comment on one of my fics. Recently someone left a comment that did not make me feel great about this story, so I want to relay some information.
> 
> Fanfic writers are probably not writing for you. You're the intended audience for sure and we ADORE giving you guys content, more than anything. But really, when push comes to shove, we write for ourselves. Our stories are ours to tell, not anyone else's. Aside form someone telling me that it reminds them of The Last of Us, which I've actually never seen or anything, this story is completely from my own head. The characters don't belong to me, but everything they're saying, doing, and everything that's happening to them is a product of a world my mind has created.
> 
> So it's incredibly disheartening to hear that someone doesn't like the path my story has taken simply because it's not their cup of tea. Fanfiction is a gift and if you don't like it, then it's not a gift for you. Put it back and move on.
> 
> I know the majority of you are incredible readers and commenters that I hope genuinely enjoy my fics and other writer's as well, but it's really important for all of us to remember; fic authors are giving you this content because they want to, not because they have to.
> 
> I know normally my notes are quirky and short, but that comment really struck a chord with me. 
> 
> anyway. love you guys.


	11. The Catalyst Revealed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uploading twice a week when I had like 6 chapters in advance written out seemed like a great idea but now I only have two and I'm ruing my decision. however it keeps me on track so I guess it's what's gotta be done

_Everything is different now, blurrier but in a softer way than it was when she would turn; the corners are not so sharp, the colors not so harsh. Nicole moves as though trapped underwater as her eyes flick down over her body. It’s there mostly but only just, like she’s just a thought rather than an actual being. Yellow straw sifts beneath feet that flicker as though they haven’t decided if they’d like to appear or not._

_Her feet solidify first to root her to the ground and the rest of her body follows suit. A sharp cough rips her from her thoughts as she looks up._

_A girl, late twenties or so, lies on a cot of straw in a barn. Hazy sunlight filters in through cracks in the slats of decaying wood, throws orange pockets of warmth around, but never on her. Maybe it’s for the best as Nicole takes a closer look; her skin is sickly and pale, covered in a thin sheen of sweat that soaks the collar of a dirty sleepshirt. Veins have begun to spider web across her face and chest, growing more and more as each second passes. Whitened fingers bury into the hay bales beneath her, covered in a thin layer of cloth Nicole imagines to have once been white._

_A makeshift bed for the dying._

_Her lips are moving but no sound is coming out, nothing but dry heaves and rasps that sound foreign on her tongue._

_Wynonna sits by the foot of the bed, hands clenched together as her eyes water. She looks younger, somehow. Less stressed. The bags under her eyes are not so dark, her skin not so pale. Nicole makes a move to comfort her, wrap an arm around her, but her feet are rooted in place where she stands._

_There’s a shriek of, “Willa!” from somewhere outside and then the door to the barn heaves open and Waverly runs in, ethereal with the dust and fading sunlight. The writhing figure on the cot stops for a moment, completely stills, then sits up and turns towards Waverly. Her lips adopt a snarl._

_She screeches and lunges towards her, teeth snapping and lips bared._

_Feet that had once been anchored lunge forward and dive in front of Waverly as the creature snaps its teeth together. A searing pain erupts in her shoulder at the same time Willa’s teeth sink into her neck where Waverly’s throat should’ve been, then everything goes white._

* * *

The first thing she notices when she wakes up is the fluorescence of the lights in the chair above her. Dry sobs wrack at her chest and tear from her throat. Doc and Dolls have thrown the whole weight of their bodies over her legs and stare at her with a curious terror as she attempts to regain her sanity.

Her fingers squeeze and Jeremy and Wynonna, who have each sacrificed a hand to hold hers, squeeze back. Brown eyes stare down at her from where Waverly’s hands are wrapped in her hair, drawing amorphous patterns against her scalp. The mask is gone.

“Hi,” she croaks after a moment.

They all blink.

“What happened?”

Waverly’s the first to speak up. “It was horrible,” she whispers. “As soon as Jeremy turned on the vial, you writhed and screamed. We could hardly keep you down. It sounded like you were dying. But then as soon as you’d breathed in the last of the serum, you stopped. And then you woke up.”

A glance around the room reveals everyone else to be nodding.

“My dear, are you feeling alright?” Doc asks. He unwinds his arms from her leg and offers one to her to gently move her into a sitting position. “Rather rambunctious actions of yours a moment prior, but I do believe that everyone here is quite relieved that you should be gracin’ us with your presence once more.”

Her head spins as she tries to process what he’s saying. His mustache is getting in the way of his words.

“Here,” Dolls murmurs. His voice is ten times more gentle but not less kind; just more understanding. Hands wrap behind her for a moment and he inclines the chair so that she can lean against it comfortably, eyes blinking as she relaxes back against it.

“Did it hurt?” Jeremy asks. His fingers white knuckle the clipboard he’s picked up, eyes wide in what seems to be a guilty curiosity.

“What?” Nicole asks slowly.

He shifts from foot to foot for a moment as if trying to decide his next words. “I mean, you flailed around and you screamed and…what happened to you in there?”

Her eyes trace over Wynonna, her own hardened as she looks at Nicole with something she can’t read that isn’t malicious but isn’t welcoming either, before they slide over to Waverly. To Waverly’s smooth, unblemished neck where dream-Willa had lunged for her, to where the only bite marks that remain are what she can remember creating herself.

“Nothing,” she finally says after a moment. “Nothing at all.”

* * *

“We don’t really know if the serum will work until you’ve gone to sleep tonight, so you have to come see me in the morning to do a blood work test as soon as your run is over. It doesn’t really matter if it activates overnight or not, but mainly if I can find the pathogens in your blood tomorrow.”

“I’ll come see you,” Nicole agrees, but she can’t decide if it’s a lie or not. Because frankly, she doesn’t need to. She feels lighter, somehow, like a piece of her had been removed. Something that was never meant to be there in the first place.

It’ll be a whole new matter trying to get back from the laboratory to her dorm, but it’s nothing compared to this new development. It’s _gone_. It’s just her again. “Wynonna, hey!” she whisper-shouts as she jogs to catch up after everyone’s left the lab. “I need to talk to you.”

It’s not a question.

She grabs Wynonna’s hand and yanks her into the nearest room she can. “You’re not really my type,” Wynonna hisses as her chest brushes up against Nicole’s, squeezing into the doorway.

“Oh, fuck off,” Nicole hisses. “I have to tell you something.” She glances out of the doorway to check and make sure no one else is there before turning back to her. “I saw something. When I started breathing that stuff in.”

She tries to summarize what she saw as best as she can, and Wynonna gets paler and paler with each word.

“Wynonna,” Nicole breathes. “Willa started the infection.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments are appreciated beyond words. stay excellent, lovelies.


	12. Pikes Before Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love talking to you guys but sometimes I don't know what I should say.

“Fuck you.” Wynonna’s response is immediate and doesn’t bite, as though it’s a matter of fact. Nicole blinks.

“What?”

“Fuck you.”

“Wynonna—”

“That didn’t happen,” she says as she pushes past Nicole and back out into the hallway. “That’s not even what fucking happened, so fuck you.” She turns on her heel and storms off, taking the stairs three at a time on her way down.

“Wynonna!” Nicole hisses. She makes an effort to chase after her. “Wynonna, wait! We need to talk about this!”

Wynonna’s head spins to face her but not much else as she continues down the staircase. “Not really a lot to talk about, Red. My dead sister didn’t start the fucking infection.”

“But how do you _know_ that,” Nicole pleads as her feet try to carry her as fast as Wynonna’s. Wynonna stops and turns, nearly colliding with Nicole as she does. Her eyes have gone hard.

“ _Because_ ,” she snarls. “That shit you saw in your dream didn’t even happen!” Her voice lowers as she inhales. “When she came back from the military, she was different, like not all of her was there. We thought it was PTSD or something, but it just kept getting worse, and it started affecting her physically. She started coughing up blood, she got pale, started sweating all the time, we were worried it was contagious. So, yeah, Nicole, we made my sister a sick bed in the barn because there had already been a death in that god forsaken house and damn it, I couldn’t let it see another. Not when Waverly had to sleep in it every night.”

Wynonna takes a heavy breath and waits for Nicole to challenge her. When she doesn’t, she continues. “She was in the barn and Waverly came in, and then she just…died. Right there on that fucking bed next to me. She didn’t get up or lunge or any of that shit. She died on that fucking bed and they came and got her body the next day and now she’s six feet under. Are you happy now?”

Moody’s words echo around for a moment in her head before her eyes widen. _“The approach got out of hand when an unnamed individual managed to escape after accidentally creating the infection…”_

“Wynonna…who came and got her?”

“What?”

“You said they came and got her the next day. Who’s _they_?”

Wynonna’s eyes widen as she shakes her head, jaw agape. “You don’t—it was the military. Some elite squad, they said it was her unit, I didn’t…” Her head falls. “It was fucking BBD, wasn’t it? I’m gonna _rip his fucking balls off_ —”

“Wynonna!” Nicole hisses. Her hand snakes out to latch onto Wynonna’s arm before she’s too far away down the stairs. “Keep a level head! Think about what might happen if you storm into Moody’s office guns blazing!”

“He’ll taste my foot when I shove it so far up his ass that it comes out his mouth is what’ll happen,” Wynonna snarls. There’s blood in her eyes that Nicole she supposes she would’ve once been afraid of but now just pities anyone on the receiving end.

“Think about Waverly,” Nicole whispers and it’s enough to halt Wynonna in her tracks. “What we learned tonight—it’s like Jeremy said. No one else can know. Waverly was in that room too. You storm into Moody’s office and kick his ass, that’s a red flag that the rest of us know something that’s going on; something we shouldn’t. He’s dangerous, Wynonna. I don’t want to know what he would do to us if he found out what we knew.”

Wynonna’s eyebrows lower as she examines Nicole for a moment. “You seem to know a bit more about him than the rest of us do, Haughtstuff.”

Nicole shifts from foot to foot. “I’m being cautious and you should be, too.”

“Hmm.”

Nicole peels her fingers from Wynonna’s arm. “Goodnight, Wynonna,” she whispers as she moves to traipse her way down the rest of the staircase.

“One last thing.”

“Hmm?”

It’s the closest Wynonna gets, leaned in so close that her nose tickles the outside of Nicole’s ear. “Waverly told me about you guys, what happened that night before the run. She told me what happened after, too. Inconsolable.”

Nicole gulps and fights off an onslaught of tears.

“I understand that we’re all dealing with our own shit, Red, but I’m just letting you know. If you _ever_ hurt her again, I’ll have your head on a pike before morning.”

Nicole’s voice comes out as a choked whisper that matches the same volume of Wynonna’s but with something much deeper enveloping it. “When I knew what I was, I didn’t want to hurt her. I never meant to hurt her like that.”

The nose that tickles her ear leaves as Wynonna wipes a tear from her eye. “I know,” she says, and then the staircase is empty and Nicole’s trying hard not to cry.

* * *

Her morning breath is something awful when she wakes up a few hours later, but it’s nothing but that. _Morning breath_. Her teeth are clean, her lips smooth. The only thing under her fingernail is a shred of cotton blanket where she’s white-fingered the blanket in her sleep.

She’s _free_ , and so damn relieved she feels like crying. But there’s no time for that, not when she’s already running late for the meeting in the morning.

The sun shines just a bit brighter on her walk to the infirmary, the air’s a bit cleaner. She had known last night that her other half had burned off but now here’s the proof, and the thought puts a little extra vigor in her step.

“You’re smiling too loud,” Wynonna grouches over a mug of sludge parading as coffee. “Knock it off.”

“Well, a good morning to you as well, Wynonna,” Nicole replies. Her heart sinks as she presses herself in between Dolls and Doc, who on their own aren’t terrible company, but aren’t preferable to sitting next to Waverly.

Waverly, who’s placidly ignoring her and had squished herself between Wynonna and Dolls.

So the run today is going to go well, Nicole supposes.

Maybe she should be afraid of venturing beyond the wall without the safety of a virus tied to her, but there’s no reason to be. It hadn’t been the virus’s shield that had gotten the team to and from the store; she was confident she could pull it off on her own again.

It _had_ been the virus that kept the infected from attacking her, but with the gash in Waverly’s forehead donning a pinkish hue, she imagines no one would have any qualms against her if she told them to leave again when her instinct told her to.

And, well. Wynonna _does_ have a big shiny gun.

* * *

“Waves, please talk to me.”

Waverly makes a face and puts a finger over her lips before shaking her head.

“I know you think the infecteds are an excuse to not talk to me, but that’s bullshit.”

Waverly rolls her eyes and hikes her gun up to her shoulder, eyes peeling over the horizon.

“Red,” Wynonna hisses. Her gun is up too and her feet crawl silently over pine needles deadened by the coming of winter to step between her and Waverly. “You trying to get us killed?”

Perhaps it will be the infecteds that kill her first after all, Nicole reasons, instead of her infatuation with Waverly Earp.

* * *

She expects Jeremy to fist punch the air when she tells him that it’s her, just her, no more virus tied to her DNA anymore, but instead he looks distraught as his hands run through his hair. What was once a five o’clock shadow is now a scraggly semi-beard that appears as though tufts have been pulled out. He wiggles his head for a moment as if debating what to say then thinks against it and drags her into the nearest empty room.

“Jeremy?” Her voice drops. “Did you hear me? You cured me!”

“I know,” he groans. “But you don’t understand! That was—I think you’re an outlier, Nicole.”

“And here I thought we were friends.”

He whacks her on the arm with his clipboard, mainly filled with scribbles and one awful (yet gruesome) sketch of what clearly appears to be a mangled infected attacking (a much more buff version of) Jeremy. “No, I mean, the reason the cure worked could’ve been for a variety of reasons that _aren’t_ actually beneficial when it comes to having to cure _actual_ zombies.”

Nicole tries to keep the color in her face as she drops her voice further and vices her grip over Jeremy’s arm, dragging him into the nearest unoccupied room. “What the hell are you talking about.”

“I can think of a whole list of reasons why it cured you that might not work for actual infecteds, Nicole.”

“Like?”

Jeremy shakes his head in stress. “Like, the disease was dormant when we administered the antidote to you. Maybe it would fight if off normally. You’re not a full zombie, maybe that had something to do with it. There’s so many little nit-picks that could have impacted how it worked. You’re—you were a Nightwalker. It wouldn’t be strong enough to heal a full infected. It only worked because you _weren’t_ a whole zombie to begin with.”

“But it _did_ , Jeremy. Isn’t that what matters?”

“For you? Absolutely.” He says it with such sincerity that it takes her back. “But what about for the rest of them, stuck in a body that no longer belongs to them? And I—I didn’t think it through very well, after curing you. You’re human again, which means we’re out of DNA.”

“What does that mean, Jeremy?”

His shoulders slump in defeat as his boot scuffs against the ground. “It means I used the last of the pathogens in the blood I had from you to create the cure that healed you. But it’s gone now. Nicole, we have nothing left to heal any of the actual infecteds.”

* * *

Nicole’s hands slam down hard on the table.

“You’re late to dinner,” says Waverly dryly.

“I sure am,” Nicole replies. “Special runner meeting tonight. Jeremy’s lab.” Her eyes scan across the whole table, desperate for a challenge that no one is brave enough to attempt. “And trust me, it’s all hands on deck.”

* * *

“Have you ever heard of a vacuum, Chetri?” Wynonna gestures to the old coffee cups that litter every surface in the room. “A broom? Maybe some Lysol wipes?” Her head ducks to look around an island that’s been discarded in the middle of the room. “I don’t see a trash can in here either. Any chance you’ve thought about one of those?”

“Do lay off the poor lad, he’s clearly under emotional duress,” Doc reasons. Jeremy goes red in the face and busies himself with tracing over the picture Nicole had seen doodled on his notepad that afternoon.

“ _Why_ are we here?” Waverly snaps, and it’s got enough bite that even Dolls widens his eyes in surprise.

“Well.” Jeremy runs his hand over the back of his neck again before mumbling out what he’d explained to Nicole earlier. “So, as you can see, we’re at, uh, a bit of an impasse and I was hoping that we could all get together and do some brainstorming, maybe see if one of us could come up with a bit more help.”

“Well, hang on,” Wynonna says, hand up. “Shouldn’t this be up to BBD? I mean, we’re talking about trying to kickstart humanity and I don’t know, maybe the six of us _aren’t_ completely suited for that job?”

Jeremy shakes his head. “BBD was taking progress in the wrong direction; I know because I was initially the head scientist up until Nicole showed up and they re-assigned me to be pretty much solely with you. I think it probably had to do something with how I acted; they wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to say their methods were wrong or suggest new ones. I may have been the head scientist, but I still had to report to Moody. I don’t know why. That guy couldn’t tell an Erlenmeyer flask from a Schlenk flask if his life depended on it.”

Waverly snorts. Wynonna rolls her eyes.

“It was honestly a blessing when they re-assigned me; I took matters in my own hands and started to develop a serum using my own methods. But they don’t know this, any of this. They know you’re an infected but they don’t know you’re healed, which is part of the reason we can’t tell anyone. They find out that you’re no longer bloodthirsty, they’re gonna have all of our heads.”

“How long do you think we can keep this under wraps?” Dolls asks.

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “But the longer we wait, the more likely it is they’ll find out. So we need more DNA, and fast.”

Wynonna glances around the room again. “Are you sure you don’t have another vial lying around of Haughtshit’s blood somewhere? This room is a mess, Chetri, I bet we could find one in here.”

“Look, even if we could, it wouldn’t work. It’s not strong enough for an actual infected.”

“Couldn’t you just double the dosage, then?”

“That’s not really how science works—I need DNA, _real_ infected DNA, if any of my calculations are correct for ratios.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Wynonna says slowly, “is that next time we go out on a run, one of us is going to have to get close enough to an infected that we can get some of their skin or something and bring it back to you, all while somehow not getting infected ourselves.”

Jeremy looks helpless, eyes and shoulders slumped in defeat. “I—” he starts, only to be cut off by a gasp.

“Oh, holy shit!” Wynonna shrieks. “Chetri, you’re a fucking genius!”

“What?”

“Okay, okay, the hand!” She points excitedly to where a hand, clearly infected, bobs in a clear liquid up on the top shelf of his desk. “On Waverly’s first run! We got ambushed by an infected and when we closed the door, it sliced off one of their hands! Holy shit! I mean, that’s gotta be as infected of DNA as it gets, right?!”

Even Doc’s eyes have gone wide with wonder at the bobbing hand that seems to nod in agreement at its own self-proclamation.

“Holy shit,” Dolls murmurs. “You kept that?”

Jeremy’s gone a stark shade of red as he smiles sheepishly. “Yeah, I don’t know, I thought it was cool. I didn’t think—I mean, it’s preserved in a formaldehyde solution so it should virtually be the same as the day I stuck it in there.”

“So how long do we have to get this antivirus going, then?” Dolls asks. He rubs his hands together.

“I really don’t know. But what I do know is that BBD isn’t telling the truth to anyone about how much time we all collectively have. Given the demanding resources, we’ve got maybe a month, tops. They’re running out of resources faster than they’re taking them in. So we really, really need this antivenom, and fast, if humanity has any chance of surviving.”

Nicole’s mind is running fast, faster than her words are and it’s slipped out before she’s realized what she’s said. “And once the antivenom is created, BBD can stop experimenting on the kids.”

All eyes turn to her in silence, and it’s finally Waverly who squeaks out a reply. “BBD has been experimenting on kids?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess they really do mean that actions speak louder than words


	13. If Up was Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how does a werewolf au sound for my next multichapter?

The silence that hangs in the air throttles Nicole as it draws out. Her jaw bobs in a fruitless effort to say something to rectify the situation, but nothing comes out.

“That’s why,” Waverly says softly after a moment. All heads turn to her. Her eyes are downcast towards her feet that shuffle against the floor of the lab. Nicole can see the gears turning in her head and it’s enough to stop her heart in her chest. “That morning after Malcolm turned up dead. You asked me if anyone else turned up dead and you said it was because you were worried about everyone else. But you weren't. It was because you knew what Black Badge was doing.”

“No, Waverly, that’s not true,” she says, because it is and it’s all she’s got to defend herself with. The only way up is down.

“Then you’ve got some fucking explaining to do if you think you’re going to be able to worm your way out of that situation, Haught,” Wynonna hisses. She wraps her arm around Waverly’s front to hold her back, moving in front of her protectively. “You’ve got one minute.”

“Waverly,” Nicole tries again, stepping towards her, but she feels a hand wrap around her arm protectively and Dolls nods at her before letting her go. “It’s not what you think.” She tries to wrack of her brain to think of the quickest way to explain herself without getting throat punched, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking at this point. “I didn’t know it was BBD hurting the kids.” _It’s now or never, Haught. The only way up is down._ “But at night, I would have weird dreams. Like I was walking around the Homestead, going outside. Like I was there, in my body, but someone else—some _thing_ else was controlling it. I don’t remember doing anything to them, but I’d wake up the next morning back in my room with blood in my mouth or blood on my hands and almost no memory of what happened the night before. When I asked you if anyone else had been hurt, it was because I’d had another one of those dreams. My first one and Malcolm turned up dead. I was worried a second one meant someone else.”

Wynonna raises her eyebrows. “Not making a convincing case for yourself, Red.”

She shoots her a glare and takes a deep breath; this is where she has to take the plunge. Everything from here on out could go wonderfully. Or not. “That day when we all went out on a run, something happened. That when the infected saw us it didn’t attack—like it was confused, but I could tell it was hungry, and it wanted Waverly.”

“But they don’t attack their own kind,” Dolls says slowly.

Nicole nods. “When we were back and the hospital took Waverly, something felt wrong. So I snuck into the infirmary that night to talk to her—to _you_ —about it.”

Jaws drop further and further and she explains Moody, the conversation they’d had.

_You survived, Nicole, because they don’t attack their own kind._

Waverly’s face has gone pale and Wynonna’s pulled her against her side with what appears to be no intention of releasing her.

“And Willa…” Nicole whispers softly. Her eyes have trained on Waverly’s. “BBD was tasked with creating superhumans for the military, and Willa was part of that. But she got sick and got out, came to you guys. It wasn’t the military who came to get her after she passed, it was Black Badge in disguise, to reign her in before the disease took full effect. My guess is on the way back it completely consumed her and, well…Willa started the infection.”

Waverly blinks as she tries to process.

“What happened with Waverly?” Wynonna asks. The Willa scandal isn’t news so her mind has latched onto the one thing she needs to know for certain; the safety of her sister. “When Moody caught you and they tried to take her.”

“I begged them to take me instead. I said I wouldn’t tell anyone if they put her back and took me.”

“But they didn’t.”

“No.” Nicole takes a breath to steady herself. “He said they needed me. For the bloodwork.” Her hand waves at Jeremy, who’s eyes widen in surprise.

“I didn’t know about any of this,” he defends.

“It’s true, he didn’t. Jeremy was used to collect my blood so they could try to create an antivenom, but it never worked.”

“That’s what happened to Malcolm and the others,” Wynonna finishes. “BBD used you to try to create an antivenom and it killed them off instead.”

“Does that mean that they were infected in the first place?” Dolls asks. His hands scrape over the stubble of his chin as his eyes race.

Nicole shakes her head. “They were using me, my DNA, to infect them. I was virtually an inexhaustible source if they were able to keep me in the dark about what was going on; but artificial infection didn’t work. They were going to try to take Waverly, try and infect her like they did with John and Malcolm and Levi, so I offered myself up instead.”

“And you—you did all of that to keep Waverly safe? You were willing to sacrifice yourself if it kept Waverly safe?”

She’s knows that physically, sure, she’s speaking to Wynonna. But her eyes are trained to Waverly as she speaks. “I love her,” she whispers, and suddenly nobody else is in the room except Waverly.

Waverly, so beautiful as she breaks, so beautiful as she fights to hold back her tears, so beautiful as she speaks through a wobbled voice. “I’m not a fucking child, Nicole,” she says. “Now because of you, Levi is dead when it should’ve been me.”

Wynonna’s hands tighten around Waverly’s shoulders. “What? Waverly, they shouldn’t have taken _anyone_. I’m not the enemy here!” Hands reach out in a desperate attempt to pull Waverly into her but she retracts herself as though she’s been burned from the tip of Nicole’s fingers, pulls herself from Wynonna’s arms and backs against the door, head shaking and eyes wide.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she murmurs, and then the door slams shut as she disappears around it.

“Waverly!” Nicole calls, only to feel a hand wrap around her arm and keep her in place. Wynonna shakes her head and it’s enough to make her reevaluate. Now’s not the time to talk to Waverly, especially not after something like that. “Haught,” she says lowly. “I know this is hard, but you did the right thing.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it,” she replies, eyes drilling into the door that Waverly had disappeared through.

Wynonna takes a breath and runs a hand through her hair. “She needs to stay alive, no matter what. I promised my Mama a long time ago that I’d keep her alive and I can’t go breaking that promise now. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

And despite how much it hurts, Nicole understands.

* * *

Despite her newfound freedom from accidental manslaughter habits, she can’t sleep. Not when every time she closes her eyes Waverly’s own flash behind them, heartbroken and distraught.

Morning comes all too fast and not fast enough  and the warmth of the sunlight feels undeserved as it throws pools of a dusky orange over her feet. It seeps across the room and she has nothing better to than watch it slide over the cool stone of her floor when it licks against against something different.

Someone’s slid a note under her door.

Bare feet pad across the floor until they’ve made it to the note. It’s clearly Jeremy’s handwriting, messy as shit and hardly legible, but it’s enough, when angled into the sun, that she can read it.

_Bring everyone up tonight. Made the antivenom. We have a problem._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo I love kudos and comments cause a bitch is desperate for validation
> 
> today is my last day of class so hopefully that means a lot more content for you guys for the next month I'm out of school college is a bitch


	14. A Plan Veiled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've ever been upset and read a single one of my fics to feel better and it's worked, then I've accomplished everything I could've ever wanted as a writer

“Have you seen Waverly?”

“Huh?” Nicole glances up from the note in her hand, weathering away like a worry stone. The air is cool outside, borderline cold but not terrible as she sits on the front steps of the Homestead. It’s well into the afternoon by now and she figures she should be taking it upon herself to train or do something useful, but she can’t get it out of her head; watching Waverly’s eyes fall last night as she realized what Nicole was.

“Waverly, dingus. Where is she?”

“Avoiding us, probably.” Nicole folds and unfolds the note against its seams where the fibers have started to show through from her nonstop torment.

“Bitch,” Wynonna replies; it holds no bite or malice. It slips from between her teeth as if by accident. “Guess you didn’t get a chance to tell her then, huh?” She brushes her fingers against the note in Nicole’s hand.

“Haven’t had the chance to talk to her at all, so no.”

“Think she’s in her room?”

“I checked; not there. She’s just wherever we aren’t, really.”

“Well.” Wynonna shrugs some hair over her shoulder. “We can’t really blame her. You and I are like two assholes in a pod.”

And, well. There’s really not enough time to unpack everything there.

“Wanna go try to smoke her out?” Wynonna suggests. “Like, start from the outside and move in until we corner her? It might work eventually.”

“I think we should let her have her space,” Nicole reasons and tries to not let the guilt bleed through her voice. It already burns her tongue like acid, sears at her lips, cuts holes into the insides of her cheeks. She can’t let it burn Wynonna, too.

Wynonna must realize this to some extent because she nods her head and puts a hand on Nicole’s back. “I know it hasn’t settled in for you yet, but you did the right thing.”

“I’m not quite sure how sacrificing Levi to save Waverly was the right thing.”

“You didn’t sacrifice Levi.” Wynonna’s voice goes soft. “You had no way of knowing they’d take him instead. You saw them taking Waverly and you got her back because you knew it was the right thing to do. You had no idea that they’d target Levi.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says, but her voice lacks depth. It’s weird how cold she is without Waverly with her, like the sun decided to stop shining, but only on her. An ironic punishment, given her acclimation to infected habits when the sun left previous nights.

Evidently realizing she won’t be able to drag anything else out of Nicole, she says she’ll see her that night and makes her way down the rest of the staircase, shooting her one last pitiful look before disappearing out of sight.

It’s only then that Nicole realizes she’s been holding her breath.

* * *

“I don’t know, Dolls,” Wynonna says. Her head rests on his chest as she tries to focus on the monotonic rhythm of his heart. So steady, so sure, something she can always rely on. “I mean, she’s been mad at me before. Like, shit-kicking mad at me before, but she’s never avoided me.”

“She’s processing. I saw her at dinner and she was actually eating something, so she’s taking care of herself. It’s…it’s a lot for her.” His arms rubs slow circles into her back as he pulls her against his chest. “She’ll come around. She always does. It’s harder since it came from. You know. Nicole.”

She doesn’t have to ask what he means.

“You’re a big idiot.”

Dolls rolls his eyes.

“I mean it,” Wynonna continues as she picks her head up from off his chest. Her fingers trace patterns against his collarbones. He’s hardly legible in the moonlight from the window, like a statute, but it makes him look ever the more handsome. Carved from steel. “Like, I’m a huge idiot. Only another jackass idiot would always know what to say to make me feel better. So you’re a big, huge, asshole, jackass, dumb idiot. And that’s my final answer.”

“Weird way to say you love me,” he replies with a frown.

“Yeah, but you knew what I meant.” She presses a kiss against his cheek and throws the covers off of them, much to Dolls’s dismay. “Now get up or we’re gonna be late to Jer-Bear’s party.”

* * *

“We have a problem,” Jeremy says as the door swings open and Nicole slips inside. He glances up at her from where the jar holding the hand, now partially dismembered, bobs in formaldehyde in his hands. “Oh…I would’ve thought you brought Waverly with you.”

Nicole’s heart drops.

“Unfortunately not,” Wynonna frowns. “She’s too busy pouting to attend Glee club today.”

“Wynonna…”

“Well?” Wynonna shrugs and leans into Dolls, picking at dirt under her fingernails. “I’m not wrong, am I? This is going to be a one-woman-short party. So what’s up, Chetri? What’s our problem?”

He rubs the back of his neck and looks between the four of them for a moment. “I mean, it’s kind of important. Are you sure we shouldn’t go get Waverly? I can go get her if she won’t listen to you guys…”

“I’ll fill her in on the details after this when she’s decided to stop giving me the cold shoulder for keeping her safe,” Wynonna snarks. “Lay it on us.”

“Okay…well.” Jeremy gestures to Nicole. “First, this has been cut off for a while. I have no idea if the antivenom is even going to work at this point. Nicole’s blood was fresh, but this smells like my gym bag. I only went once and then left it in my car for three months after. It might be too old, but it’s all we’ve got.”

Everyone blinks. “That’s it? That’s the whole problem? You called us up here to tell us you didn’t have a firm workout regiment?” Dolls asks.

Jeremy shakes his head and turns red. “No, no, I _wish_ that was the problem. The thing is, because I could only think of one way to synthesize it correctly, it came out the same way. As a mist.”

“Then this is good news,” Nicole says. “It healed me, it’ll heal the full zombies, too. Twice as potent and all that.”

Instead of looking elated, Jeremy shakes his head; he almost looks ashamed. “It’s not the actual quality of the serum I’m worried about it. Since it’s a mist, we have no way of getting it out to them. It’s not like we can just fly a giant drone out and spray them with an antivenom and _hope_ it works, you know? Maybe we could get one or two, but it would be challenging. And moreover, borderline impossible to get it outside of the compound, much less outside of this building without being noticed.”

Wynonna’s eyes have gone blank as she retreats into her head to think. “So what you’re saying,” she says slowly. “Is that you made an antivenom that would only work if we could get infecteds into an enclosed space?”

“More or less. It’s like Nedley said, they aren’t dead, they’re just vacant. They still have to breathe. If we can get this out to them somehow, I think it can cure them. The only problem is how to get it out to them.”

“Are we terribly positive it’s immoral to trust the workings of Black Badge?” Doc asks. His hands clap together. “I do see your distrust, however I cannot help but wonder if they may be more suited to this task than ourselves.”

“I told you,” Jeremy replies. “Black Badge was taking progress is the exact opposite direction. Assuming that if we brought this to them and they didn’t dismiss it outright, they’d want to test it, which would take months. We’ve got a few weeks, tops, before we hit a serious shortage of supplies behind the wall. If we have any chance of surviving as a species, we need out from behind this wall, and we can’t do that without the cure.” He glances between each solemn face, hanging on just a moment too quickly with Nicole’s.

“So how are we getting this out to them, then?” Dolls asks.

“We don’t,” Nicole says suddenly, and everything hits her at once. Exactly what they have to do.

“What?”

“Jeremy said it himself. There’s virtually no way to get this out to them.” The answer is so obvious she would’ve missed it had it slapped her in the face.

“So what are you suggesting?”

“We don’t get it out to them.” She shrugs and lets a smile steal her lips. “We let them come to us.”

* * *

“You. Come here.” Nicole feels a yank at her arm that forces her back into the lab after everyone’s left for the night. The hand bobs form the jar as if to welcome them back in. Wynonna’s fingers dig into her bicep. “I know we made a plan back there, and that’s all fine, but you and I are going to vary from that slightly.”

“You could’ve asked nicely,” Nicole hisses, hand wrapping where Wynonna’s fingers will no doubt bruise. “I’ll get everyone else before they get too far away.”

“I don’t ask nicely,” Wynonna replies. “And this isn’t really a _them_ plan, it’s an _us_ plan.”

That’s enough to make Nicole stop in her tracks. “What do you have in mind?”

Wynonna’s nose tickles her ear as she leans in, whispers. At the sound of Waverly’s name she can feel the first prick of a tear, at the second she can’t hold it back. Her back goes rigid in an attempt to calm herself to hear the rest of Wynonna’s plan and by the time she pulls away, her cheeks are tear stained and red.

“It has to be you who does it,” Wynonna whispers. Her voice is low, melancholic, and it drips heavier than the tears on Nicole’s cheeks. “It always had to be you.”

It’s not Nicole who nods her head, but rather her knowledge that Wynonna’s right, as much as it hurts to admit it.

A moment of silence hangs in the air between them for a moment before Wynonna lets out a breath. “This sucks balls,” she says.

“It does,” Nicole agrees. She lets the silence linger for a moment more before addressing what she knows they’re both thinking. “We have no idea if this is going to work. People could die. We let them in here and that shit doesn’t work, it’s the end of life as we know it.”

“Well.” Wynonna gulps and stares at out the window to where the cowl of the moon screams at them to stay put. “Then we die first.”

* * *

_Please open up. It’s me._

It’s a shot in the dark that slipping a note under Waverly’s door will work, but her whole life has been a shot in the dark since the first infected appeared. So maybe this shot will be a little less dark than the rest.

The door squeals as it opens, mimics the panic in Nicole’s heart as it does.

“You could’ve knocked, you know,” Waverly whispers as she pokes her head around the door and smiles despite herself.

“I was worried about waking you up in case you were sleeping,” Nicole replies. God, she’s missed that smile. “But seriously, I just…I know what I did to you is unforgivable, and if it remains that way, then it does and I wouldn’t ever push you.” She takes a deep breath and wrings her hands together in front of her. “I just don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t get to see you. One last time.”

Waverly stares at her with wide, unrevealing etes. Maybe it’s for the best that the only answer she gets is the door creaking shut until it’s sealed and Nicole is blinking back tears and trying hard to breathe out. “Waverly Earp,” she whispers under a wobbled breath. “Even if you forgive me tonight, you’ll never forgive me after tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I took 8000000 years to update this today
> 
> kudos and comments make the author happy


	15. A Plan Unveiled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some christmas eve angst even tho it's not christmas eve in this fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> before you all yell at me in the comments there's another chapter ok
> 
> I mean still feel free to yell at me in the comments cause I adore it but just saying

A watery sun casts thin shadows across the frost of a morning not yet awake. The rest of Purgatory still sleeps, blissfully unaware of the monstrosity that awaits them. Wynonna’s feet hit the ground repeatedly as her hands rub together in a desperate attempt to stay warm. “And we’re sure this is going to work?” she asks.

“Eighty-eight percent sure,” Jeremy agrees.

“I have complete confidence in us,” Doc says. He looks slightly green.

“Everyone got their radios tuned in to the same frequency?” Dolls asks. The nods are solemn, but they’re there. “Remember, Haught. You open those gates after you’ve got the signal. Not a second before.”

“And then all hell breaks loose,” she says. Despite the weight of the situation, she can’t help the whisper of a grin that traces over her lips.

“All hell,” Dolls says.

“All hell!” Wynonna says. “Now move your butts. We’ve got humanity to save.” Doc and Dolls nod then break away at a jog. “Chetri, you’re with me. And Haught?”

She doesn’t have to say anything. Nicole knows. “I’ve got you, Earp,” she replies softly, then shoots Jeremy a wink and peels off towards the Homestead.

Wynonna’s right, after all. They’ve got humanity to save.

* * *

The alarm blares when she’s about halfway there, and it’s loud enough of a pierce that she hits the ground with a roll out of instinct. It screams danger as it rips throughout the compound; there’s no way a single soul is going to sleep through that.

The plan has to work from here; there’s not a chance of them backing out now.

She’s back on her feet and sprinting hard enough that she thinks she can maybe feel blood in her lungs, but her mind is focused solely on Waverly, solely on what she has to do. Solely on that smile that sends her to her knees.

People are piling out of the Homestead in tired commotion in search of the the bunkers; the alarm means that an infected has made its way inside the gates, and it’s everyone’s job to get the hell underground, and god damn fast, until security’s taken care of the problem.

She forces herself through a mass of shoulders until caramel hair bobs in the distance. “Waverly!” she yells over the mass of yawns and questions. It’s like trying to swim up a river, but damn it, she could do just about anything if it means keeping Waverly Earp safe. “Waverly!” she cries again, hands reaching into the mass until they’ve latched onto her arm and pulled her out.

“What—Nicole?” Waverly blinks blearily. “We have to—the alarm—we have to get underground for security…”

“Waverly.” She makes sure she makes full eye contact, stares her down. “I need you to come with me.” It’s not a question, and it’s not something Waverly thinks she’d be able to say no to if it was.

* * *

“We’re in—”

“A closet, I know,” Nicole says as she pushes Waverly inside and shuts the door behind her. “Trust me, the irony doesn’t escape me.”

Waverly rolls her eyes. “Okay, so then what the hell are we doing in here? There’s the fucking alarm going on outside and security is going to have a _shit_ trying to get everyone down there so they can find the infected—”

“They’re definitely gonna have a shit, but not for that reason,” Nicole says. She slams the blinds to the door closed. “Doc and Dolls pulled the alarm, and it’s their job to get everyone underground and then give security one hell of a god damn time trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“What? Nicole, you’re not making any sense.”

“I know, I know.” She takes a deep breath. “But we have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Do you trust me?”

Waverly falls silent for a moment as she attempts to process. Then, quietly, “With my life.”

Nicole doesn’t even have time to nod before she’s surging forward, connecting her mouth with Waverly’s. She meant for it to be sweet, slow, and nothing like the hunger that it is, but she can’t help herself. She pushes back, back, until Waverly’s up against the pipes that line the walls and her hands have found her wrists and pushed them back, holding them as she kisses harder.

She almost forgets what she’s doing.

Waverly’s eyes go wide as she feels something smooth and cool press against her wrists, and then they widen further in anger and Nicole is pulling away as Waverly’s lips chase her own, furiously blinking back tears. “Nicole—” she starts, reaching for her.

Only she can’t. Nicole’s handcuffed her to the piping on the wall. “What—Nicole!” She shouts. “What the hell! Let me go!”

Nicole shakes her head as she backs up, eyes watering freely now. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I can’t—it has to be like this. I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt.”

“Nicole!”

She keeps shaking her head, backs up against the door. “Wynonna will come get you when it’s all over. I promised her I’d keep you safe, and now I’m promising you I’ll keep her safe.”

“Nicole—please, you can’t do this—please—” Waverly weeps. She pulls furiously at the handcuffs. “Don’t leave me here, don’t, you can’t! Please!”

Each cry tears a hole in Nicole’s heart bigger than the last; she steels herself over with a breath and pushes the door open. “I’m so sorry, Waverly Earp,” she says one last time, and then locks the door behind her as she leaves.

* * *

The gates are sealed by the time she reaches them and for once she sees them not as her saving grace but as the prison bars that keeps humanity alive with only the promise of forsaken freedom. “Hey!” She tries to make her voice as loud of a whisper as possible and flails her arm to wear the guard in the booth dozes. “Alarm!”

He’s not dozing anymore.

“What?” White hair shaved into a mohawk and a black beard that somehow only contrast well for him shake as he swings the door open and pokes his head out. “What?”

“Alarm went off at camp! Nedley said it was all hands on deck, sent me to come get you? Said he needed you for something.”

“Fuck me,” he yawns, unburdened, and slings an AK-47 over his shoulder before taking off at a light jog towards the compound.

“Sending the last one your way,” she hisses over the radio when she’s sure he’s out of sight.

“Got it, all clear!” she hears over the radio a second later, and Dolls is clearly out of breath as he yells it. “All hell! All hell!” Then the radio goes dead.

Whispering, “oh, fuck,” is nothing short of an appropriate reaction, anyway, as she pushes at them. They’re still for a moment, but then slowly, slowly, they begin to open and she throws the whole weight of her body into it, grinding her teeth together and yelling as she does so.

This is fucking ridiculous.

They swing wide simultaneously and the mouth of the gate is open, yawning as it wakes in the morning, as though silently screaming for those that have left through it and never returned.

Now or never.

“Come and get some, shit tickets!” she screams at the top of her lungs. The forest reverberates her words back at her. “Come and finish what you’ve already taken from me!” The pistol in her boot comes out to play. “Come on!” she shrieks, and shoots a round in the air.

The forest cushions her sounds, waits silently, and stares back at her, as if to ask, _that all you got?_

And maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but that’s not what matters. Not when the domino effect takes place. What she imagines had been one infected that was attracted to the nose and began to amble over created enough sound to attract another, and another, until a whole horde of them emerge in the distance.

“Ohhhhh, time to go,” she whispers. The radio shakes between sweaty hands. “All clear on this end!” She cries. Feet cut against the pine needles at her feet as she turns and runs for her life. “All hell! All hell!”

The burn in her lungs when running to Waverly is nothing compared to what she feels now, like the oxygen is no longer helping her but hindering her, like it’s her own breath that suffocates her the harder she runs.

It probably doesn’t help that the infecteds draw closer and closer with each labored step she takes.

* * *

“Hurry your science shit up, Chetri!” Wynonna yells. The butt of a pistol connects with the head of a guard and he hits the floor, knocking clean out against it.

“Gonna need a few minutes,” Jeremy replies. His hands work to connect tubes to valves and valves to tubes and anything else he can.

“You’ve got one. Maybe less.” _Plink_.

“You’re not killing them, right?” he yells. Wynonna pokes her head around the doorway and shakes her head.

“Nah, knocking them out cold though. It’s cool, most of them were part of Black Badge Dick-vision anyway.”

Jeremy rolls his eyes. “Done!” He shouts suddenly. “Done! Nicole! The eagle is ready to fly!”

“I told you we’re not calling it that, man!” Wynonna yells from the hallway.

“Let it go!” Nicole screeches over the radio. “And then get the hell out of there!”

“Clear!” he screams to Wynonna, then twists the valves.

* * *

Nicole doesn’t think she’s ever been so thrilled to see Doc a day in her life, but there he is, gun perched on his shoulder as he stands in front of the Homestead with Dolls. His eyes widen as he sees her. “Ms. Haught!” he shouts gleefully. “You’ve made it in time for the show!”

Only, she imagines she’s never been less thrilled to see Wynonna, so maybe that balances it out. “Earp!” she shouts. “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to stay safe!”

“And miss this? Absolutely not.”

“Where the hell is Chetri?!”

“Ah, I sent him down to the bunkers. Anyone ever tell you you worry too much?”

“Fuck you! Did he do it? Did he set it up?”

“Should be going off any minute. I thought you said the infecteds were coming?” She peers over Nicole’s shoulder to where the horizon is starkly empty, eerily so. Silent.

“They’re—”

 _“Nicole fucking Haught!”_ A handcuffed wrist barges out of the doors of the Homestead and Waverly Earp follows, looking angry enough to face god herself. Jeremy trails behind her; so sending him down to the bunkers must have gone well. “You’d better have a good fucking reason for—oh _shit!_ ”

“Told you,” Nicole replies, then swings around to see what must be _hundreds_ of infected swarming towards them, limbs rolling and tongues lolling. “Antivenom?”

“Now!” Jeremy cries, and the pipes that run across the compound above them burst into life, showering out a rain of mist. The infecteds stagger for a moment, stop, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll start to twitch, the veins that spider across their body will retract, the—

They start to roar, instead.

“Oh, fuck,” Wynonna whispers, and Nicole thinks that maybe _fuck_ is a gross understatement.

They’re about to be swarmed by hundreds of infected with absolutely no way to defend themselves.

“Guns up!” Dolls shouts.

She wants to listen to him but something catches her eye; the twisted braid of an infected in the front, rooted with sticks and leaves and dirt and blood and god knows what else. It’s the infected from her dream.

It’s Willa Earp.

The air shifts next to her and suddenly Waverly’s there, hands up and ready to fight. Her eyes scan over the infecteds without focusing on any one in particular, but it’s not the same the other way around.

Willa’s taken a particular interest in Waverly and lets out a blood curdling screech before loping over. She’s not the fastest nor the strongest, but she’s certainly the goddamn most determined. “Waverly!” Nicole screams, but it’s too late. There’s no goddamn way Waverly can turn in time, no goddamn way she can move fast enough to avoid what’s coming next.

And suddenly, her dream makes sense.

Nicole’s feet react before her mind does and she lunges forward, shoving Waverly out of the way. Teeth sink into her neck, a neck that should’ve been Waverly’s but instead is hers, and dig deep until she thinks they may never come out again.

A searing pain explodes in Nicole’s shoulder and Willa’s body convulses, falls backwards, hits the ground with a thump, a hole the size of a fist blown through her chest.

Nicole hits the ground as well and the pain strikes twice as hard; her eyes blur for a moment, her hearing fades out as the pain consumes her.

The spider veins on Willa’s face begin to fade as she convulses on the ground, and then her whole body goes still. Maybe it’s her imagination or it’s the serum deluding her as it mists out from the pipes she vaguely remembers Waverly telling her about so long ago, or maybe she’s dying, but she swears she can feel other bodies dropping against the ground all at once, can feel the vibrations of their hearts in her ear that presses so heavily to the ground.

Maybe she is dying, after all, but she registers the words, “Thank you,” mouth from Willa’s silent lips and then she watches her soul part from between them.

The last thought she has as her head hits the ground in defeat is of Waverly Earp, smiling at her with enough love that maybe dying isn’t as bad as she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what if I made you guys wait until next monday instead of thursday to upload chapter 16 yeehaw
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (I won't but what if I did)


	16. Occidere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> occidere is the latin word meaning "to kill," but it also means "to set, as the sun"
> 
> maybe we all need a bit of a sunset every once in a while

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be up in the mountains tomorrow skiing all day and didn't know if I'd be able to post this or not and I didn't want to leave you all hanging in suspense, so here we go. hope you guys like it. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://please-say-nine.tumblr.com) to stay updated on the whereabouts of my next fics along with other garbage posts

The first thing Nicole notices is sunlight; almost painful against the white of the sheets she’s under. Her clothes feel different—no longer the confining solidarity of the gray jumpsuit but something else; softer. Warmer. Cleaner. Her eyes blink slowly as she attempts to focus them; they loll of their own accord around the room. Her shoulder aches for some reason but her neck is too sore to angle herself to see what the issue is, so she opts to look somewhere else.

To her left Waverly Earp snores in a chair, matted hair falling in a loose braid over one shoulder, and she’s struck with sudden deja-vu of the first time they met. The hospital bed, the sunlight, everything about it screams the new beginning, before…

Her heart rates kicks as everything comes back. “Waverly!” she attempts to cry; the rasp that comes out hardly does it justice but it’s enough that Waverly’s eyes fly open and her hands go to Nicole before she’s fully awake, fully aware of what’s going on.

“Baby?” she asks.

“Waverly! The infecteds!” Nicole tries again, but her voice weakens even further as she struggle to pull herself from the bed.

“Baby, baby,” Waverly coos. Cool hands dance at the nap of her neck, curl through her hair, until she takes a deep breath. “Look at me, Nic. I’m right here. Look at me. You’re safe.”

She can’t remember the last time someone truthfully said that to her.

A glance around the room confirms what Waverly’s saying; the infirmary is much less vacant than the last time she’d been one of its residents, but it’s calm and quiet. A few people sleep on cots; others move quietly from bed to bed, tending to them.

“Wha…”

“You’ve been asleep,” Waverly coos, coaxing her back down. “And you need to rest. I’ll recline you up a bit so it’s easier. But you can’t strain your neck or shoulder.”

“They hurt,” she mumbles.

Waverly laughs, and damn it if that’s not the best sound she’s ever heard. “I bet they do,” she says. Her hands work to incline Nicole’s chair until she can comfortably lean forward and press a gentle kiss to hre forehead, winding her fingers through her hair. “You’ve been out for three days since the attack. As soon as the infected bit you, the antivenom kicked in. Everyone in the compound turned back into a human.” Her voice grows quiet in sorrow. “Mostly everyone, anyway.”

Nicole blinks.

“Everyone was confused at first, but it was like what you said when you were a zombie; you could remember parts of it, you just couldn’t control it. Everyone was a bit dazed; the first two days were _chaotic_ trying to explain the situation, but we ended up getting it under control once people realized what had happened.”

“We as in Black Badge?”

“God, no.” She passes over a cup of water. “Moody and Lucado and the other scientists responsible for the whole mess are actually still in the bunkers underground. Nedley’s been assigned a small force of guards tasked with making sure they don’t get out until we know what to do with them.”

Nicole blinks again.

“Jeremy?”

“Perfectly alright. Working on synthesizing more; last I heard he was making some portable little cans. Like pepper spray, but anti-infected spray. People have been going out on runs to get more supplies at longer ranges and whenever they run into them they blast them with it and drag them back to camp to rest here until they’ve recovered fully.” Her hand waves to implore at all the people sleeping on cots.

“You were…” Her eyes travel around the room. “I…” She winces. “Waverly, when I chained you up, in that room, I was...I had to keep you safe. Waves, I’m so sorry. How did you get out?”

“Jeremy,” Waverly laughs, and Nicole is surprised to hear that it holds no malice. “He was running to go down to the bunkers and heard my screaming. Kid’s great with picking locks—who knew?”

Nicole blinks in surprise. “You’re not mad at me?”

Fingers scratch the back of Waverly’s neck and she shakes her head. “I was. Raging. Furious. But then when I was out there, and I saw the infecteds swarming you, I realized. I would’ve done the same thing; I would’ve done anything to keep you safe.”

The words that she doesn’t whisper are there anyway; _i love you_

“This is…a lot,” Nicole whispers. Her head grows fuzzy with the new material and she shakes it to try to clear it out.

Waverly dips her hand under her head almost instantly and scoots closer on what looks like the most uncomfortable chair Nicole has ever seen. “Take as long a you need, baby, I’m not going anywhere.”

She lets herself sink into Waverly further, lets her breathe in the smell of her until she’s sure she’ll never forget it, before pulling back. “Okay,” she whispers after a moment. “Then what?”

“Then—”

“ _Wynonna._ ”

Searing pain erupts in Nicole’s shoulder as she tries to sit up and Waverly yelps in surprise before forcing her back down.

“Careful! Wynonna’s fine, everyone is fine. Listen, just.” She takes a second to readjust Nicole’s pillows and pull the blankets further up her shoulders. “You need to take it easy. When Wynonna shot you—”

“Wynonna _shot me_?”

“Oh, jesus,” Waverly murmurs. Her face goes red. “Yeah—when you dove in front of the infected, the one about to attack me, Wynonna shot. The bullet went through your shoulder and blew the infected’s chest open. That’s when the antivenom kicked in, right before you passed out. Here, lay back down.”

The bite mark in her neck pulses as if to remind her.

“The infected…you recognized her, didn’t you? Right before she died.” Maybe if she had the mental energy, Nicole would slap herself for saying that, but she _did_ just take a bullet through the shoulder, so maybe she should cut herself some slack.

Waverly’s nod is solemn and hardly present. It’s more than enough. “You saved me, you know,” she whispers after a moment. If you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t jumped in front of me, the infected would’ve gotten me instead of you. You were—you were willing to turn yourself back into one of them.”

“I wouldn’t have, though. The antivenom…”

“Wasn’t definitively going to work,” Waverly countered. “At that point we thought it had failed, and you still threw yourself in front of me despite knowing what would happen to you. No second thoughts.”

Nicole tries to think back to what she was thinking about before she did it, like maybe her life flashing before her eyes, but all that comes to mind is a smile as bright as the sun.

* * *

“Earp.” Nicole ducks her head as she leans against the doorframe. A sling blankets her arm and she’s got a few scrapes and bruises to show for it, but overall, she thinks as she sizes herself up in the mirror, for surviving a zombie apocalypse, it ain’t too bad.

“Jesus! You scared the fuck out of me.”

“Language.”

Wynonna grins and shakes her head as she pulls Nicole into a hug and pretends not to notice as she winces against it. “I’m glad you’re back, Haughtshit. I’m not sure what I—how I…” She pulls back and turns before Nicole can notice her wiping a tear off her cheek.

A little too late, but the sentiment is there regardless.

“I’m really glad you’re back, Nicole,” she says.

“I’m pretty glad I’m back, too.” Nicole readjusts her sling. “Probably would be in a lot better condition if you hadn’t shot me, you know.”

“Probably,” Wynonna agrees.

“I have to ask, then.” She glances out into the hallway to make sure Waverly’s not nearby. Logically she knows she isn’t; she’d all but carried Waverly back to her room, half-delirious from lack of sleep, before pressing a kiss to her forehead and leaving to find Wynonna. “I know you saw me, I know you saw me diving in front of Waverly, and you shot anyway. You might have aimed, but it was more chance that it went through my shoulder to hit her instead of my chest.”

“Hmm.” Wynonna chews her lip. “Not a question. Try again.”

Nicole’s voice goes soft, but not angry. Just curious. “So why’d you shoot, then?”

“I saw you, and I saw Willa, and I saw Waverly,” she says, as if that’s enough to answer the question. “I took the chance and I aimed for your shoulder and I pulled the trigger. I told you—I’d do anything to keep Waverly safe, like I know you would. Like you did.”

There’s no apology in her voice and it better like that; it’s easier to swallow. It’s much more Wynonna than anything she’s ever heard.

* * *

  **One Year Later**

Most of the world no longer resides under the title of infected though many have it seared underneath their skin as something that was. It’s a slow process, trying to restart humanity, but it’s on the way, even if it crawls.

A newspaper sprawled across the table of the dining room holds stories of the six gangly kids that single-handedly kick-started humanity; _Where Are They Now?_

_Jeremy Chetri, 26, now the world-renowned scientist Black Badge prevented him from becoming lives with his husband Robin Jett, 24, in Canada._

_Wynonna and Waverly Earp, 26 and 19 respectively, have adopted a new home fitting named The Homestead with lover Xavier Dolls, 27, and close gal pal Nicole Haught, 22, in Canada._

_The whereabouts of John Henry Holliday (age unknown) are unknown, but reports say he’s surfaced somewhere in Glenwood Springs, Colorado momentarily before disappearing again._

_BLACK BADGE DIVISION: SUPER-HUMAN TO SUPER-HUBRIS_

The article underneath had been ripped out and magnetized to the fridge per one of Wynonna’s drunken fits of splendor; _Richard Moody and Jeannie Lucado face up to 200 years in prison with no chance of bail for the creation of the infection._

_The compound behind what was commonly known as, “The Wall,” fittingly called, “Purgatory,” is now home to residents still in search of family members that might be host to the infection. Chetri currently works to create an algorithm to track said individuals down._

Nicole debates crumpling it up and throwing it into the fire to watch it burn until it remains nothing but ash. She doesn’t want to forget, but sometimes it can’t hurt to not remember, if only for a night.

Waverly snores softly against her, arms curled around her own and toes tucked underneath Nicole’s thighs to keep them warm. A book, no longer opened, sits patiently in her lap and a mug of tea gone cold accompanies it on the tray table next to the recliner.

“Baby,” Nicole whispers, jostling Waverly. She frowns but stays asleep, clinging tighter to Nicole. “Bed time.”

Waverly’s a light sleeper, but she stays passed out through Nicole swinging her up into her arms as she stands, carries her through the kitchen, past the door swung wide where Wynonna’s cradling a bottle of jack on her bed in a drunken stupor and into their bedroom. “I’ll be back,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and disappearing into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

She falls asleep to the setting sun as the world rebuilds itself around her.

**_Fin._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man. okay. so like, that's the end. I wanted to leave a lot of things up to you guys to figure out, but I also know that can be confusing so feel free to ask me as many questions as you want in the comments. I love it. 
> 
> this fic was so long in the planning; I had a whole twenty page outline that took me three weeks to do before this even started, so it's hard to believe it's all over. i'm thrilled, but in a sad way. a good way regardless. hope i end up seeing you guys around for my next multi chapter, whenever it may be.
> 
> in the meantime, I have PLENTY of short fics (a few k words) that will be coming your way after I'm gone from the mountains in a few days, so here's hoping you enjoy that.
> 
> more than anything, I hope you that you guys had as much fun reading this as I had giving it to you all.

**Author's Note:**

> leaving kudos and comments is the NUMBER ONE WAY for you guys to let me know you're enjoying what you're reading and want to read more of it? It takes .00000001 seconds out of your day to click "kudos" and then makes the rest of mine. so please, if you like what you're reading and want more of it, let me know!
> 
> I'm also asking for u guys to leave comments cause I'm a bitch desperate for validation, but aren't we all
> 
> see u kids next thursday for chapter 2


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